Summer camps line Joe’s Pond in West Danville. Pixabay photo
[W]EST DANVILLE — A dead body found in Joe’s Pond Wednesday morning was a man police say they had been looking for after a report that the man was acting disorderly and wielding a firearm on the front porch of a residence on the pond.
The body of John Allen, 63, of St. Johnsbury, was found between 5 and 6 a.m., according to Vermont State Police, by a summer resident.
Vaden Cobb was watching the calm water Wednesday morning at his summer home when something caught his eye.
He saw what looked like a child’s blow-up raft about 30 feet out — and a strange object floating next to it.
“I suspected it wasn’t just something normal,” Cobb said.
The Virginia resident paddled out with his kayak and found a dead man face down in the water, the back of his head and shoulders at the surface. He called 911 at 5:45 a.m.
Troopers responded to the firearm incident in the early hours of the morning at Joe’s Pond, where the man’s family owns two camps, said Vermont State Police Sgt. Mark Potter, a detective stationed at the St. Johnsbury barracks. But before they arrived, he had fled, leaving the gun behind on the porch, Potter said.
Allen had been involved with police in St. Johnsbury that morning too, the detective said. Officers responded to the man’s home in town for a complaint about someone honking a horn, which was resolved, Potter said.
Troopers don’t consider the death suspicious at this time, Potter said.
“It appears he was in the raft and fell out,” he said.
Allen’s body was transported to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy to determine cause and manner of death.
Correction: The man’s first name was incorrect in an earlier version.
