Summit County opens homicide inquiry after body found off Interstate 70

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office responded to reports of a body near Interstate 70 on Sunday. The body, identified by the Summit County Coroner’s Office as a female, was found off of the slope of the eastbound lane, near mile marker 210 around 1:30 p.m.

Taneil Ilano said an employee with the Colorado Department of Transportation discovered the body a distance away from the road Sunday. An autopsy is scheduled for today. The identity is still unknown.

“We’re less than 24 hours into this thing. We’re still trying to figure out what we’ve got,” Summit County Sheriff John Minor said. “We’re trying to figure out who this person is, where this person’s from.”

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is assisting the Sheriff’s Office and Coroner’s Office with the case, which is currently being investigated as a homicide.

The last similar case the county saw was in the 1990s, where a small child who died of natural causes was found near Miner’s Creek. The last body that was investigated as a homicide was discovered in the 1980s.