Tyler Rich shaken after discovering a bloodied dead body on his New Year Eve run in Massachusetts

Country star Tyler Rich opened up about his ‘rough 24 hours,’ after unexpectedly discovering a dead body during his four-mile run in a Massachusetts State Park on New Year’s Eve. 

The 34-year-old singer opened up about the heart-wrenching experience on social media, before applauding first responders and members of the armed forces for being able to ‘look death in the eye every day’ and ‘continue to live their everyday lives.’

Still shaken, he explained he was ‘fairly far off from where anyone else would be running’ in a heavily wooded area, before saying he thought he saw a ‘young homeless man’ sleeping.

‘He was on his stomach and had a bag tied around his foot and was faced down. (Assumed maybe this was so people didn’t steal his belongings while he slept,) he explained,’ the performer said. 

Rich continued: ‘After running around him, I felt bad for him, he was sleeping facedown and just looked like he was in a bad place. So I turned around and went back to check on him.’ 

Then, the singer said he realized the man was ‘not breathing’ and looked like he was shot or the victim of blunt force trauma. 

‘As I get to the front of him, all I see is a lifeless face covered in blood. Everywhere,’ he recalled. ‘At this moment, I freak out and spring up the steep hill to try and find anyone with a pone to call police (I only had my apple watch at the time.)

He, then, finds a couple about 30 yards away and used their phone to contact the authorities and ends up spending hours ‘doing statements with state troopers, FBI, local police and detectives. 

‘This young man looked maybe 18-25. Couldn’t tell, cause of all the blood, but his skin was still white. Didn’t look like it happened too long before I got there,’ he noted. 

He continued: ‘After some time, the officers found a gun in one of his hands under his body. Which means it potentially could have been a suicide…Not that there is any type of thing that could help me cope with finding him like this. But, for sure knowing he wasn’t there discarded by someone else, and that he was there where he wanted to be, will at least put me a little more at ease.’  

Rich went on to describe how the ordeal has weighed heavily on him.

‘I’m doing what I can to process this, the image, the reality. It’s been a rough 24 hours,’ he admitted. ‘Something I’ll never unsee or forget the couple minutes when it was just him and I down at the water as I figured out what the hell was going on and what I was going to do. Dead silent middle of a state park. Just running water and him and I. He looked like a young, normal kid. Someone with a family probably wondering where he was.’

At this time, the Chicopee Police Department and Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit are still invest
igating the man’s death and his identity remains unknown. 

James Leydon, a spokesman for Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni, said ‘there was no threat to public safety related to this incident, which does not appear to be criminal in nature,’ according to MassLive. 

Rich, who was in Massachusetts with his wife Sabina Gadecki for the holidays, concluded his caption by writing, ‘Whoever you are and were, RIP friend.’