People pass away every day here in the Upper Ohio Valley, and 99.99 percent of those deaths are mentioned only on a newspaper’s Obituary Page, but in 2019 the public was shocked by a pair of reports out of Marshall and Ohio counties.
The first took place in mid-January; the other tragedy happened in early November, and both incidents included details never reported before in the Upper Ohio Valley.
In January, an officer from the Glen Dale Police Department was dispatched to WVU Medicine Reynolds Memorial Hospital, where a caller reported seeing what appeared to be a human body near a street. That officer reported to the scene and immediately called the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office for assistance.
It was a human body. It was 60-year-old Randy Strawn.
After a thorough investigation that lasted for months, charges were filed against the two surviving males for allegedly depositing Strawn along 8th Street in Glen Dale. The men told investigators that Strawn had become ill on the way home and asked to go to the hospital. They said they dropped him off. Video footage, however, revealed other details.
It is an unknown at this time, according to Marshall County Chief Deputy Bill Helms, if the case will go to court or if the county Prosecutor’s Office will enter into plea deals with the men.
Then, in early November in the Warwood neighborhood of Wheeling, an accident took place where a motorist reported to police that he struck a person near a shopping plaza along River Road. It was early morning, and it was dark, foggy, and a steady rain was falling.
When officers reported to the scene, they searched the area for the victim but found nothing. Minutes later, the Ohio County 911 Dispatch Center received a call from the Interstate 70 exit ramp at Washington Avenue. That is where other drivers reported seeing what appeared to be a person under an SUV.
Somehow, detectives concluded, the victim had become attached to a second vehicle that had passed the accident scene in Warwood. The names of the motorists have not been released by the Wheeling Police Department, and no charges have been levied against them.
