Port Alberni resident Kevin Hunter and his work partner Bruce Leicester discovered the body of a man that had been missing for more than five months while working between Sooke and Port Renfrew on Dec. 11.

Hunter and Leicester were performing their yearly road assessments for B.C. Timber Sales in the hills between the two towns when they split up for duties. However, when Leicester returned to Hunter, he brought him to a Jeep YJ that contained the dead body.

Hunter said the area in which the man was found is an area that has a history of marijuana crops that had been “crawling with an odd assortment of people.”

The road in the area was over-grown and Hunter and Leicester needed to walk to find the Jeep.

Once they found the body, they were stunned.

The dead man was 59-year-old Bruce Sheppard of Brentwood Bay who had not been heard from since June.

Hunter noticed that it looked as though Sheppard had devised a contraption to fill the inside of the vehicle with exhaust.

“We’ve both worked in the woods for very close to 37 years and you always wonder what you’re going to find around the next corner, like a dead animal or an abandoned truck or some old logging material,” Hunter said, “but you don’t expect to find that.

“We were spooked, to be honest. I’m really glad we didn’t touch anything or open the door, because the smell would have killed us. Whatever was left would have fallen out and that would have really freaked us.”

Hunter and Leicester doubled back to find cell phone reception and made a call to Sooke RCMP using a construction worker’s phone. The police did not seem surprised when they put all of the information together.

Police then arrived four hours later, along with the coroner service and funeral home attendants, and Hunter and Leicester led them to the body.

“It brings closure to the family,” Hunter said.

SMcKenzie@avtimes.net

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