Richland County Coroner’s Office seeks help in identifying remains found on Beltline Blvd. and other unsolved cases

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — The Richland County Coroner’s Office is asking the public for help identifying a person whose remains were found back in December of 2020.

The department says the scattered remains were found by a property owner who was clearing underbrush by the Gill Creek floodplain.

“The first step for forensic anthropology is to come up with a biological profile of an individual. We use scientific methods to estimate sex, age, race and unique features of the individual from their bones,” said forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Stevens.

The coroner’s office says the individual whose remains were found on South Beltline Boulevard is believed to have been a white male in his 60s and around 5 feet 6 inches tall. He is thought to have died in the summer of fall of 2020 but the cause of death is undetermined.

“It could just be that he died of natural causes. He did have facial and chest trauma that were healed injuries but we do not believe that’s how he died,” said Richland County coroner Naida Rutherford.

The facial reconstruction from this case as well as others will be re-released early next year as part of the coroner’s office’s Missing and Unidentified Persons Day.

“These events have been hosted in large cities around the US,” Stevens said. “They’re typically hosted around February 3rd which is National Missing Persons Day.”

The Richland County coroner says that one population in particular has been hesitant to report missing persons in the past. 

“I’d like to say that our Latino community are sometimes in fear that if they report someone missing that maybe ICE will come after them or that it would be a problem in terms of law enforcement.,” Rutherford said. “We’d like to say to that community that is not something we are involved in. If someone is missing, please come forward and see if it’s one of the people that we have. We have 18 cases.”

More information on these cases can be found online. 

“You can view these profiles by going to Namus.gov and searching ‘SC’ and ‘Richland County’ in the ‘Unidentified Persons’ search tab,” Rutherford said. “We urge that if you have someone in your family that is missing, don’t assume that they just ran away or don’t want to be found. Sometimes we just don’t have families that come forward.”

 If you have any information on any missing or unidentified persons, contact the Richland County Coroner’s office by calling (803) 576-1799.