A body was found lying face up in a puddle of water at a
Christmas tree farm in north Gilroy.
GILROY
A body was found lying face up in a puddle of water at a Christmas tree farm in north Gilroy.
Just before 9 a.m. today, a worker saw the body laying among the trees along the edge of the farm, which sits just west of the Safeway on First Street. He immediately called police, who established a wide perimeter around the crime scene, blocking off the entire farm, the adjacent car wash and a large portion of a muddy, empty lot behind the farm. The lot was crisscrossed with footprints and tire tracks, and littered with soggy garbage.
Police said the man was in his 20s or 30s and was wearing street clothes. The body showed no gunshot or stab wounds, said Sgt. Jim Gillio. However, police had not yet flipped the body over, he said. Temperatures dipped to near freezing over night, but police would not say if that tied in temperature to the man’s death. Given the circumstances, they are ruling the incident as a suspicious death and are investigating it as if it were a homicide, Gillio said.
No witnesses had come forward to identify the body, Gillio said.
“Since we don’t know what we have yet, we have to treat it as a murder,” he said. He was careful to add that it has not been determined to be a homicide – police are just treating as if it were as a precaution.
Safeway employees were anxious to find out if the dead man was the same man who was found about 3 a.m. this morning, drenched and drunk, slumped on one of the tables in front of Safeway.
“My anxiety is kicking in,” said Raul Granados, a Safeway employee, as he stood at the edge of the crime scene. “I’m starting to shake.”
Granados called police early this morning after helping a young white man in his 20s who was wearing a black beanie and a black sweatshirt. But when he called the police, the man took off running, employees said.
Gillio did not know if the two incidents were related but Detective Stan Devlin spent a substantial amount of time speaking to Granados.
Security cameras at the surrounding businesses may also shed some light on the cause of death, Gillio said.
By about 10 a.m., the body was laying next to a portable toilet, covered with a yellow tarp. Large muddy puddles had formed after the previous night’s rain. Though police would not confirm, it appeared as if the metal wire fence surrounding the farm had been pushed in and detached from a post near where the body was lying.
“It really shook the boys up this morning,” said Patrick Mooney, the owner of Crystal River Tree Company, an Oregon-based company that rents the land near Safeway every holiday season.
It was one of Mooney’s employees who saw the body laying near the back of the property when he arrived at work.
“He knew instantly what this was,” Mooney said as he waited for police to give him the go ahead to transfer the 120 Christmas trees from the back of his truck to the farm. He had just arrived from the Eugene area to deliver the trees when he was notified of the body.
“Some mother and family out there are going to grieve today,” he said. “It’s a tragedy for the community.”
