Incident report

At 1:20 p.m., Dispatch received a 911 call regarding the discovery of a dead body in the offices of the Harte Agency, a real estate company at 1923 University Avenue. The caller identified herself as Sofia Church (Person 2), an employee of the Harte Agency.

Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Unit 207 (Officer D. C. Baxter) was dispatched and arrived at the scene at 1:23 p.m. After confirming the presence of the body, R/O secured the scene and contacted Dispatch, and requested backup and medical assistance.

Reporting Investigators (R/Is) Detectives S. Murphy and E. Parker were assigned and proceeded directly to the scene. At R/Is' request, Coroner’s Inspector L. Johnson and a CSU team were notified to respond to the scene.

R/Is arrived at the scene at 1:52 p.m. and found that R/O had secured the area. Environmental conditions at the scene upon arrival are as follows: Weather: Exterior Ambient Temperature: 91° F/ 33° C; Relative Humidity: 55%; Interior Ambient Temperature 70° F / 21° C; Interior Relative Humidity: 40%.

R/O Baxter made the following verbal report, which is stated in summary and not verbatim.

R/O was met at the front entrance of the office by an adult female who identified herself as Sofia Church (Person 2), a Harte Agency employee.

Church directed R/O to a workroom area of the office where there was the body of an adult female, who Church identified as Annette Wyatt (Person 1), another Harte Agency employee. At R/O's request, Church returned to the reception area to direct backup and medical personnel to R/O's location.

R/O then secured the scene and cleared the area, finding no other persons present on the premises.

R/O said YCFD EMTs R. Peterson and J. Bilkey arrived at approximately 1:35 p.m., and after confirming the victim was deceased, withdrew from the crime scene.

R/O Baxter further stated that, to the best of his knowledge, the following personnel had occasion to enter the crime scene area and must be excluded by CSU personnel: witness Sofia Church, EMTs Peterson and Bilkey, and himself.

After receiving the report from R/O Baxter, R/Is conducted a preliminary inspection of the scene. R/Is found no signs of forced entry into the office.

The body was located in a workroom in the southeast corner of the office, north of the reception area. R/Is found no signs of disturbance in any other location within the office.

R/Is noted no signs of a disturbance or struggle in the workroom and observed no papers in or on the copier other than apparently blank paper in the letter and legal supply trays. CSU will conduct a more thorough examination of the copier and report their findings.

In the workroom of the office, R/Is observed a lifeless human body, a female estimated to be in her 30s, lying on her left side on the floor in front of the photocopier on the east wall. On the floor approximately eight feet from the east wall and three feet from the south wall, R/Is observed what appeared to be a nail gun.

Visual inspection of the body indicated the victim was wearing a light blue short-sleeved shirt, khaki cropped cargo pants, and khaki platform wedge sandals. R/Is observed an object that appeared to be a nail protruding from the back of the victim's neck. R/Is delayed further inspection of the body until the arrival of the Coroner's Inspector.

Coroner's Inspector Luwinda Johnson arrived at the scene at approximately 2:30 p.m. and joined R/Is at the body's location. Inspector Johnson pronounced the victim deceased at 2:37 p.m. by visual observation that the victim was not breathing and by tactile observation that the victim did not have a palpable carotid pulse or any other indications of heartbeat or respiration.

Inspector Johnson noted that rigor mortis was beginning to resolve in the face, neck, and extremities, and livor mortis was fixed on the left side of the body. While she withheld an official estimate pending an autopsy, Inspector Johnson speculated the victim had been dead approximately 12 to 24 hours. Inspector Johnson indicated that further details would be available in the official autopsy report.

After Inspector Johnson completed her initial inspection of the body, she stayed with the CSU team to ensure the integrity of the body while the team took photographs of the scene and performed preliminary analyses, until the body could be removed from the scene without affecting other evidence.

CSU arrived at the scene at approximately 2:45 p.m. R/Is instructed CSU to process the entire scene according to standard procedure.

A preliminary search of the immediate area for any additional weapon(s) met with negative results. CSU will conduct a more intensive search and report their findings.

R/Is interviewed the witness Church in a meeting room on the west side of the location. Church was then asked to remain available to investigators and released from the scene

The body of the deceased was remanded into the custody of Coroner's Inspector Luwinda Johnson and was removed from the scene at 8:00 p.m. and transported to the coroner's office for autopsy.

Evidence was remanded into the custody of Forensics Officer T. R. Douglas for transport to the State Crime Lab for routine analysis. CSU is expected to submit an inventory of items taken into evidence within fourteen days of this report, with detailed report(s) of their findings to follow at a later date.

R/Is left the scene at 8:22 p.m. Before leaving, R/I Murphy instructed CSU to seal the scene upon completion or end-of-day suspension of processing. CSU to notify R/Is of progress by the end of this date. As of this filing, CSU is still actively processing at the scene.

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