Nebraska man missing for a month is found dead in chimney

A month after a tenant reported frantic yelling in his Nebraska apartment building, a missing man was found dead in a chimney.

Building where the body was found
1414 S. Third St., Norfolk, Nebraska. (Google Maps image) 

Police in Norfolk announced on Wednesday, Oct. 25, that the body recovered the previous week was that of Zachariah A. Andrews, 29. The Norfolk man had been officially reported missing on Oct. 3, and the last sighting of him was Sept. 15, the police said.

On the afternoon of Sept. 16, a resident called police to report somebody yelling for help, apparently inside the two-story apartment building. “It was someone saying, ‘Dear Jesus, help me. Dear Jesus, help me,’” another tenant later told the Norfolk Daily News.

By the time officers responded, the yelling had stopped, and three other residents said they hadn’t heard anything. The police suggested that the noise might have come from a loud television on the first floor.

Within about a week of the incident, tenants reported a foul smell. A maintenance worker initially attributed it to dampness in the 110-year-old brick building, the landlord told the Daily News.

The landlord said he asked the man to investigate further, and on Oct. 18 the worker cut a hole in the basement ceiling. Seeing what he believed to be an opossum tail, he told the landlord the odor was from a dead animal and that he would remove it the next day.

On Oct. 19, he called the landlord with startling news: “It’s not a possum, it’s a person.” The tail was actually the lace of a shoe on somebody who was wedged in an out-of-use chimney.

The body was removed by police, who had to break through a wall in a first-floor apartment. In announcing the identification, the department said a parking warning had been placed on Andrews’ car, near the building, on Sept. 20, and that officers had spoken with the missing man’s family.

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