(WBBM NEWSRADIO) —A body was found at 31st Street Beach late Thursday morning, a week after a man went missing there.
The body was found on the shoreline around 10:45 a.m. in the 3500 block of South DuSable Lake Shore Drive, Chicago police said.
The man, who was Black and between 20 and 27 years old, was pronounced dead at the scene. The Cook County medical examiner’s office has not released the man’s identity or cause of death.
The discovery comes amid a search for Oribi Zachary Kontein, 26, who went missing Oct. 26 at the beach.
Kontein’s car had been left parked nearby with personal items inside, according to his longtime friend Emmanuel Okirie.
Okirie said surveillance video viewed by his friends apparently shows two men stealing items from Kontein’s car.
“It’s really fishy, everything we’ve seen now. I hope he’s still fine but my gut feeling is that he’s not. It’s been a month and two days,” Okirie said Thursday afternoon.
He said he has known Kontein for eight years, since before they both moved from Nigeria with a group of friends who split up to attend schools across the United States.
Kontein and Okirie both attended DePaul University, where they were roommates. “He always kept his room really clean and dressed really nice — like corporate with dress shoes,” he said. “He was a really nice guy.”
They hung out less often after college and last saw each other at a funeral in September.
After Kontein’s disappearance, his friends organized a search party, posted fliers and tried to keep the pressure on police to continue the search.
“His disappearance has been a mystery,” he said. “Like, what’s happening? We don’t know.”
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire & Chicago Sun-Times 2021. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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