The body of a young dad from Maryland who vanished while visiting Ohio to attend a Steelers-Browns game was found in a nearby river, officials confirmed Wednesday.
Authorities ID’d the floating corpse as 24-year-old Phoenix Phillips to 3News a day after emergency crews dredged the body out of the Cuyahoga River, the outlet reported.
The father and native of Perryville, a Baltimore suburb, was found around 1 p.m. near Jacobs Pavilion after first responders rushed to a call for a person in the water, emergency services said.
The medical examiner then identified the remains as Phillips, whose disappearance last week in Downtown Cleveland was described by police as “concerning.”
Phillips, who’d travelled from his native state to Ohio, was in town to watch the matchup between the two football rivals, according to a Facebook post by non-profit Cleveland Missing.
The Maryland native was last seen around 6 a.m. last Friday near West Superior Avenue and Robert Lockwood Jr. Drive, according to a missing person report.
Cleveland police spokesperson Sgt. Freddy Diaz told told WEWS that Phillips “at some point kind of got separated from the person he was with,” but that authorities were still working out what had happened.
Before the confirmation that Phillips had died, Cleveland Missing social worker Breejanee Alford told WEWS that she’d met with Phillips’ “devastated” family, who described him as a “loving dad.”
It’s currently unknown how Phillips died and what caused him to end up in the river.
