Police say they don't know what killed a man whose body washed up on the beach in Sandy Cove in Digby County in September, but they're sure it wasn't the result of a crime.
A 43-year-old man from Saint John, NB, had been reported missing on July 11, 2019 and his body has been identified through DNA analysis.
Digby County RCMP worked with the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service, and the investigation was also part of a partnership with the New York Academy of Art to reconstruct the faces of Canadian unidentified human remains, the RCMP said in a news release Monday.
Police last week released a photo of a facial reconstruction of the human skull that was found on the beach in the hope that it could help to identify the person. Earlier this month, photos of clothing that was worn by the person was released.
The skull found on the beach was one of 15 from Canada reconstructed at a New York Academy of Arts Forensic Sculpture workshop that took place earlier this month.
The Nova Scotia Justice Department said in a release that students at the workshop used clay to create facial reconstructions.
The police department in Saint John did not issue a release when the man went missing, and said it won't release his name out of respect for his family.
"There's nothing suspicious when it comes to his death," said department spokesman Jim Hennessy.
Cpl. Jennifer Clarke of Nova Scotia RCMP said the name won't be released because there's nothing criminal surrounding the circumstances of the death.
She added on Monday that from the timeline of the investigation it seems this DNA analysis was already in the works to identify the person and was not directly associated with the skull reconstruction or the photo that was released. "This is not how the ID came along," she said.
But the amount of sharing of the case via social media definitely did seem to help in the case and the RCMP are thankful to the media and public for helping to spread the word.
The Canada's Missing website lists 13 men from Saint John, but none is the same age as the man who went missing in July.
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