Last week, police in West Siloam Springs, Oklahoma, found an unidentified man’s body along highway 412. The body has now been identified.
Police released the name of Kelvin Dean Boyle, 35, who was from Southwest City, Missouri, 5News reported.
Boyle was an Army veteran who spent more than a year in Iraq. He was the father of three children – two sons and a daughter.
The family established a GoFundMe account for help with expenses.
On Aug. 2, drivers found his body on Highway 412 near the Oklahoma-Arkansas border in the early morning hours, and reported it to police.
Investigators said multiple cars had run over the body. They are unsure how the body came to be on the highway.
Boyle’s family said he’d been visiting friends in the area.
Drivers initially thought the body was a deer because it was unrecognizable.
“When they actually were on the road and hit it, they thought they had run over a deer that had already been hit,” Chief Larry Barnett of West Siloam Springs Police Department told News on 6. “I believe 3 or 4 different vehicles that we talked to that actually had hit the body.”
“The body had been run over several times,” Barnett added.
“My sons and I thought it was a deer until we walked up and saw it was a person,” driver Brett Crawford told 5NEWS. “My youngest son said, ‘no dad, there’s some tennis shoes in the road.’ So we went back out to the road, and it was very obvious when we got there it was a person that had been hit, so we just flagged traffic.”
Boyle’s wallet was found approximately 400 yards away.
Part of Highway 412 was shut down for almost five hours to conduct the investigation and cleanup.
Boyle’s remains have been released to his family.
“Boyle’s death is under investigation,” Barnett confirmed to Grand Lake News.
A joint investigation is underway, including The West Siloam Springs Police Department, Oklahoma Highway Patrol and Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.
Investigators spoke with individuals Boyle was connected to in the area, interviewing possible witnesses and reviewing local surveillance footage.
Investigators are unsure at this point if Boyle’s death was accidental or a homicide.
