MORE: Huber man fled moving car, died in pipe
Patrol Lt. James Faunda said a team of investigators will conduct interviews in Huber Heights and continue to investigate social media, but “the big thing we’re waiting on is the medical examiner’s report.”
Reached by phone Tuesday, a Belmont County Coroner’s official said a medical exam and toxicology screen was ongoing at the Licking County Coroner’s Office. Troopers are also running blood tests.
A major question in the case is how and why Dickens, a Chaminade-Julienne High School graduate who attended Central State University, made it to Belmont County on Sunday morning — more than 130 miles from Cleveland and nearly 200 miles from Huber Heights.
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Family members told troopers they believed Dickens was in Cleveland, Faunda said, noting troopers believe social media photos confirm Dickens attended the Saturday night Cleveland Cavilers game against the Chicago Bulls. The home game was played at Quicken Loans Arena in downtown Cleveland.
Dickens side-swiped another vehicle around 11:30 a.m. on Interstate 70 near mile marker 211, jumped from the vehicle before it came to a stop and ran across the highway and down a steep hill to a drainage culvert, police said.
About 50 minutes earlier, a string of profane posts began on Dickens’ Facebook page. The posts, reviewed by this newsroom, issued attacks on individuals, including family members, and were met with confusion from the man’s social media followers.
“What the heck is going on,” one person commented on a series of 11 photos uploaded at 10:37 a.m., which appear to be screenshots of text message conversations and a Snapchat. Another person commented, “Huh?”
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Another post from the account appears to recall the basketball game the night prior. The misspelled post appears to target an individual and includes a series of emojis, pictorial symbols used in text messages.
“Got that fentanyl for sell (sic) don’t you boy? I saw y’all (emoji for “looking”) at the CAVS vs BULLS GAME LAST NIGHT.” the post from 10:46 a.m. reads.
Troopers discovered Dickens crawled 200-300 feet inside a drainage culvert and tried for more than an hour to convince him to escape, but he eventually stopped communicating. A police robot found him face down in 6-8 inches of water. A West Virginia dive squad removed his body from the culvert, at which time authorities declared him dead on the scene.
“It was 38 degrees out side and there was running water coming through this pipe,” Faunda said. “As cold as it was and as wet as he would have been, it’s very possible it could have been hypothermia related.”
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