Body found in Athens creek

By Joe Johnson

A body was found in a creek in northern Athens Friday afternoon.

The body, which appears to be that of a white male was discovered by county workers who were checking on a sewer line in the area of Maxey Boulevard off of Barber Street, according to Athens-Clarke County Coroner Sonny Wilson.

Wilson said he was confident that the body was not that of 27-year-old Seth Evans, who went missing 11 days ago.

Wilson estimated that the badly-decomposed body was in the creek for more than two weeks, and possibly was that of a homeless person who lived in a camp nearby.

“He’s not the same size (as Evans)” Wilson said, and the body was located about 10 miles from Evans's home on University Circle, where he apparently parked his SUV the night of March 29.

After the body was retrieved by firefighters from a tree in the creek where it had been lodged, it was sent to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab for positive identification, a process which could take several weeks, if not longer, Wilson said.