[Southsider2k12]

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/...2e7fd39476.html

Woman's body washes up at Indiana Dunes State Park

By Jeff Burton jeff.burton@nwi.com, (219) 548-4354 | Posted: Friday, October 21, 2011 11:00 am

CHESTERTON | State conservation officers are investigating a body that washed up on the beach Friday morning at Indiana Dunes State Park.

According to a release from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources Division of Law Enforcement, a walker discovered the body near the water's edge around 8:40 a.m. Friday.

Dunes State Park employees were notified and Indiana Conservation Officers were called to the scene.

The body was reportedly turned over to the Porter County Coroner's office and an autopsy is pending.

Read more: http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/...l#ixzz1bQxSecQf

[Southsider2k12]

http://posttrib.suntimes.com/8363749-537/b...7MjHT4.facebook

CHESTERTON — A body found Friday at the Indiana Dunes State Park has been identified as that of an Indianapolis woman who vanished in February.

Porter County Coroner Chuck Harris said it appears the 47-year-old woman drowned and that her death was an apparent suicide. A jogger found Shah’s decomposed body Friday morning washed up along the Lake Michigan shoreline about a mile east of the park pavillion.

The woman’s family said she last was seen Feb. 7 after leaving her husband a note saying she was going away for a few days “to get my head together.” Her minivan was found that night parked near the Lake Michigan shoreline at the park’s Mount Baldy. A search that followed over the subsequent days uncovered no sign of the woman.

[diggler]

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/...2e7fd39476.html

Now how would you like to be the one to discover a washed up body along the shore ?

[bandaid19]

Yet another testament here to the power of the lake.... 8 months, she's been out there.

Just so sad and scary. Makes me think about our missing kayaker... I was wondering how our crazy wind/waves/temps of the last week would alter that situation. I hope they find him before 8 months passes, to give his family peace.

Just so sad, and so powerful.

[Southsider2k12]

Here is the original story

http://www.citybythelake.org/forums/index....l=woman+missing

[Southsider2k12]

http://www.chestertontribune.com/PoliceFir...ch_identifi.htm

Eight months after an Indianapolis woman vanished at Mt. Baldy in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore—her footprints in the snow dead-ending at the beach but pointing in the direction of the shelf ice—her fate is no longer a mystery.

On Friday morning, the body of Roxanne Shah, 47, was found on the shoreline at Indiana Dunes State Park.

Shah’s family identified her late on Friday from photographs of tattoos on the body, Porter County Coroner Chuck Harris told the Chesterton Tribune.

“They were Chinese symbols, kind of unique,” Harris said. “And they were on the correct locations of the body.”

Harris has ruled Shah’s death a suicide and determined the cause of death to be drowning. Shah had attempted suicide on at least one previous occasion, he said.

Shah was partially clothed—not unusual for bodies long submerged in the water, Harris said—and there were no obvious signs of trauma. She was discovered at 8:38 a.m. on Friday at the water’s edge east of the Pavilion by a person walking the beach.

Harris believes that the violent wave action and fierce north winds of last week’s storm dislodged Shah’s body from its resting place in Lake Michigan and washed it ashore.

Shah went missing on the evening of Feb. 7, when a National Park Service (NPS) ranger found her 2003 Ford Windstar parked in the lot at Mt. Baldy. Inside the van: a note to the effect that the vehicle was broken and its owner would return in a couple of days. The ranger searched for the minivan’s owner well into the early morning hours of Feb. 8—checking the lot and the top of Mt. Baldy—but without success, NPS said at the time.

The search was resumed later on Feb. 8, when human footprints were found in the snow on the beach heading in the direction of Lake Michigan. But the footprints appeared to dead-end, possibly covered by snow or swept by the wind, and NPS accordingly asked the U.S. Coast Guard to undertake a search of the shelf ice with its specialized equipment and litters. The USCG also tasked a fixed wing aircraft to the search that day and NPS firefighters swept the area as far east as the NIPSCO property in Michigan City and as far west as Kintzele Ditch in Beverly Shores but no sign of Shah was ever uncovered.

One week later, on Feb. 16, NPS organized yet another search and 40 personnel combed the area from U.S. Highway 12 to the beach but once again nothing pointing to Shah’s whereabouts was found.

In the day’s following Shah’s disappearance, the Indianapolis Star reported that her husband, Anthony Vivaldi, had advised police that his wife had left him a note saying that she was “going away for a few days ‘to get my head straight.’”

“It was not unusual for Shah to go to the Dunes to hike or camp, even in inclement weather,” the Star also reported.



Posted 10/22/2011

[Ang]

Yet another testament here to the power of the lake.... 8 months, she's been out there.

Just so sad and scary. Makes me think about our missing kayaker... I was wondering how our crazy wind/waves/temps of the last week would alter that situation. I hope they find him before 8 months passes, to give his family peace.

Just so sad, and so powerful.

Did they ever find that South Bend woman who jumped off the back of the lighthouse a couple years ago? I've never heard a word about it since the original story....

[taxthedeer]

Yet another testament here to the power of the lake.... 8 months, she's been out there.

Just so sad and scary. Makes me think about our missing kayaker... I was wondering how our crazy wind/waves/temps of the last week would alter that situation. I hope they find him before 8 months passes, to give his family peace.

Just so sad, and so powerful.

The missing kayaker's body washed up on shore at Central Ave. beach in Beverley Shores yesterday.