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Man's body found in Charlestown below highway ramp, police say

E-Mail|Link|Comments () June 12, 2008 03:55 PM

By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

The body of a 44-year-old Chelsea man was found this morning on the grounds of a Charlestown concrete company. For reasons that are not yet clear, the man apparently abandoned his car on the ramp connecting the Tobin Bridge to the Zakim Bridge Wednesday night and disappeared over the ramp’s edge, law enforcement officials said.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s office is investigating. “The probe, at this time, is a death investigation with no preliminary indication of foul play,’’ said district attorney's spokesman Jake Wark. Authorities are withholding the man's name pending notification of next of kin.

Mac Daniel, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, said the agency was notified shortly before 10:30 p.m. that a car had been left on the ramp.

The man's body was found this morning on the grounds of the Boston Sand & Gravel Co., which owns the property below the ramp.

Daniel said surveillance camera tapes showed a man driving a red Honda onto the ramp, getting out of the vehicle, and then walking toward Jersey barriers along the ramp before he disappears from view.

State Police started investigating Wednesday night. One 911 caller reported seeing the driver abandon the car, climb into another, and drive away. However, investigators believe the caller was mistaken and witnessed not the Chelsea man, but a good Samaritan who was checking on the car, said State Police spokesman David Procopio.

Procopio said the abandoned car was found near where the inbound side of the ramp has a chain-link fence rising above Jersey barriers. A trooper walked along the ramp past the fencing and peered over the ramp Wednesday night, but did not see anything amiss.

Last year, a New Hampshire man was killed when the car he was riding in veered off a ramp to the Tobin and plunged 70 feet to the concrete company's property.