After Body Found In Reservoir, DC Officials Take Steps To Continue Service
By Peak Johnson
On September 10, detectives from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. located the body of an African-American male in the McMillan Reservoir.
According to NBC Washington, police are still working to try and identify the man and figure out why he was in the reservoir.
“Just as it was getting dark, one of the employees at the McMillan Reservoir noticed something floating in the water,” Metro Police Department’s Capt. Ralph Mclean told ABC 7.
The man was wearing no clothing, except for underwear and socks, Mclean added. The body was transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for an autopsy soon after.
“It appears to be a black male in his 20s or 30s, but after a body has been in the water for so long, it’s hard to tell,” Mclean told ABC 7. “With bodies like that, it’s going to be really hard to tell if there is any trauma. We probably won’t know that until they get the body back from the medical examiner’s office.”
Police told NBC Washington that the man was likely submerged in the water for at least several days before surfacing.
The reservoir was suspended temporarily and treated with extra chlorine, according to The Washington Post.
Amid potential concern about water quality, the general manager of the Washington Aqueduct assured NBC Washington that water was safe to drink.
Bodies have been found from time to time in Washington area waterways, The Washington Post reported, in rivers such as the Potomac, Anacostia, and Tidal Basin.
While these rivers have nothing guarding them, there is a chain link fence with barbed wire surrounding the reservoir. It is not clear how the body could have ended up in the reservoir in the first place.
DC Water Spokeswoman Pamela Mooring said that would switch water sources from the McMillan to the Dalecarlia treatment plant, reported The Washington Post, while the water was being treated.
Mooring told The Washington Post that the procedure was “out of an abundance of caution,”