Human remains found by volunteer roadside cleanup group

On Saturday, near the intersection of Route 313 and Webb Drive in Hilltown Township, members of a group performing voluntary roadside cleanup reported to police they found human remains.

At this writing, neither members of the Pennridge Area Republican Club, which undertook the trash pickup, nor township police know the identity, sex, or approximate age of the person, as the body went unfound for an undoubtedly long time and had decayed.

Club members discovered the remains in a culvert that morning, initially seeing a rope, which they pulled to reveal a head and neck — the latter held by the rope’s looped end — prompting the volunteers to call the police. The crew soon found sneakers, a vaporizer pen, and a box cutter close to the bank of the nearby stream. 

Further along the waterway, community members said officers located the rest of the body, recalled Kim Bedillion, the club historian who was on-site for the Adopt-a-Highway event, the first of an expected series for the group.

Bedillion, a member of The Independence’s advisory board, remembered the shock many in the group felt at the discovery. She noted one elementary school-age boy joined his father for the day’s cleanup efforts and was among the half of the volunteers, numbering about ten, working along the culvert who first noticed the remains. Their astonishment sparked a fleeting suggestion that the remains mightn’t have been real.

“He tried to play it off as, ‘Oh, it was like an elaborate Halloween decoration,’” Bedillion said. “They were horrified. [It was] nothing you would expect to find along with tires and road debris. It’s the last thing anyone expected, so they were shaken up by it.” 

Despite Hilltown Township Police being unable to release much detail so far, since autopsy results are still forthcoming, the department is examining the strong possibility that suicide caused the death, Police Chief Christopher Engelhart told The Independence. 

“That hasn’t been officially determined or ruled yet,” he said. 

Engelhart called the incident fairly atypical, though he said his agency has encountered somewhat comparable cases over the years, noting some wherein the deceased likely succumbed to natural causes outside on residential properties.

“We’ve had circumstances similar but maybe not quite to this extreme,” he said. “But we’ve had, unfortunately, [times] when remains have been located. But it’s not very frequent.” 

Amidst the incident’s sadness and morbidity, Bedillion hoped that at least the medical examination now underway will identify the deceased, allowing that person’s loved ones to move forward in mourning after a period of surely heartrending uncertainty.

“It was probably a missing person, and at least maybe the family will get closure at this point,” she said.