The man found dead on Wednesday near Roxham Road, near the US border, has been formally identified by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ).
This is Fritznel Richard, a 44-year-old man from Montreal. According to the provincial police force, he was trying to travel to the United States to join a member of his family and is likely to have died of hypothermia.
The man’s body had been spotted from the air by a US Border Patrol helicopter. The agents had notified their Canadian counterparts and the SQ had taken care of the rest. The police had to transport his body by helicopter because he was in a wooded area, inaccessible to vehicles.
The victim bore no trace of violence and there did not seem to have been the intervention of a third party in his death, explained the spokesperson for the SQ, Louis-Philippe Ruel. The information gathered so far tends towards a conclusion of accidental death, but the police force has not yet completed its investigation.
Fritznel Richard had been wanted during the holidays by the SQ. Relatives reported him missing on December 27. Police, however, ceased their search two days later as reports indicated he had entered the United States.
It is possible that the body of the man remained for several days in the snow, not far from the busy border crossing of Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle.
The question arises, however: why did the man take a passage through fields and woods to cross the border? The SQ did not provide an answer on this subject and refuses to confirm if the man had an irregular status in the country.
On Thursday, the SQ had deployed teams on the ground in the same area, including police on all-terrain vehicles and a tankette. The police, assisted by the RCMP, combed the area, equipped with a metal detector, hoes and a tracking dog.
“To see if the places could speak to us,” explained Mr. Ruel on Friday.
As his identity was still unknown at the time, their efforts were aimed at finding objects to identify the man, for example, a backpack, a wallet or even pieces of clothing which could have provided clues, he said. He specifies.
A coroner’s inquest must be held to determine the precise causes and circumstances of his death.