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‘Pokemon GO’ Wyoming Teen Finds Dead Body In River While Playing Game [Video]

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 15:26 PST, Jul 10, 2016

A 19-year-old Wyoming Teen found a dead body in a local river while playing Pokemon GO. The incident reportedly took place on Friday, July 8, at around 8:30 a.m. local time. Shayla Wiggens was playing Pokemon GO, a new app that leads virtual players to actual, real-world spots to collect Pokemon and/or other Pokemon GO-related items.

Fox News reports that the Wyoming teen was playing Pokemon GO when she was directed by the GPS-driven game to an area of the Wind River along highway 789. When the teen found herself under a bridge near Riverton, Wyoming, she also found herself face-to-face with a dead body. She told authorities that she’d been directed to the area by the Pokemon GO app, which had alerted her that there were “resources” in the vicinity.

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According to a report given by the Wyoming teen to local police, she had been “scouting the area” to make sure that there were no other Pokemon GO players lurking in the area when she found the deceased man. He was laying face-down in the water, which is reportedly so slow-moving it’s nearly still.

According to local law enforcement, the death of the man found by the Pokemon GO-playing Wyoming teen was most likely accidental. According Undersheriff Ryan Lee, an investigation into the scene where the dead body was found indicates that the dead man appears to have gone into the water at the same spot where the Wyoming teen found his remains while she played Pokemon GO.

“It’s still water right there. There’s not much current.”

The police have identified the deceased, but his name hasn’t yet been made public. According to local authorities, no foul play is suspected in the man’s death, and they are waiting to contact his family before announcing his personal details.

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The teen, who was playing Pokemon GO when she found the body, reportedly lives close to the river in the B&K Trailer Park, along with her mother.

The Daily Ranger reports that while local authorities believe that the deceased most likely died from an accidental drowning, an autopsy was planned for Saturday to confirm his cause of death. Officials expect that they will have preliminary autopsy results back by the middle of the upcoming week, and at that time will have a clearer understanding of what led to the demise of the man found by the Pokemon GO-playing Wyoming teen.

The body, which was found by the Wyoming teen just after 8:30 a.m. on Friday, was recovered from the river by about 11:00 a.m. Authorities were able to accomplish the quick recovery using a swift water rescue raft to transport the body back to the shore. From there, it was transported to the local morgue. The recovery efforts were aided by the Freemont County Search and Rescue and Riverton volunteer fire department crews.

The area where the Wyoming teen playing Pokemon GO found the dead body on Friday is a bit tricky when it comes to authority and jurisdiction. Reportedly, the Pokemon GO-playing teen was in an area where three different local jurisdictional boundaries converge, which could have made the finding of a dead body problematic.

However, local officials and various jurisdictions worked together to determine that the body was found in an area under the legal jurisdiction of the local sheriff. All in all, the sheriff’s department, Riverton Police Department, federal officials, and authorities and county officials are working in tangent on the investigation into the dead body found by the Pokemon GO player on Friday.

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In the immediate aftermath of the discovery of the body by the Pokemon GO-playing Wyoming teen, authorities were forced to set up boundaries and secure the perimeter, which resulted in traffic being shut down in one direction. The travel disturbances were clearly brought to an end, however, when officials concluded their search of the area and investigation into the unexplained death.

The Wyoming teen who found the body while playing Pokemon GO hasn’t mentioned whether or not the experience will impact her decision to keep playing the game in the future.

[Image by stepmorem/Shutterstock]

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