Tyler Rich Finds Dead Body on New Year’s Eve
Tyler Rich had a really tough start to the new year. The country singer turned to social media on Friday (Jan. 1) to reveal that he found a dead body while he was out for a run on New Year's Eve (Dec. 31).
In a post to Twitter, Rich reveals that he was out for what he planned to be about a four-mile run in Chicopee State Park in Massachusetts at the time he made the horrifying discovery. He had run about two and a half miles when he says he ran through a heavily wooded area that was well away from any of the main paths, where he saw what he thought was a young homeless man sleeping facedown. He ran around the man, but turned back to check on him out of concern, since he says the man "looked like he was in a bad place."
He quickly realized the man wasn't breathing, and as he came around in front of him, Rich writes, "All I see is a lifeless face covered in blood." Rich didn't have his phone with him at the time, so he found a couple in the park and used their phone to report his gruesome discovery, after which he spent "about an hour" giving statements to various authorities who arrived to investigate the scene.
Investigators found a gun in the dead man's hand under his body, sparking speculation that he may have committed suicide. While Rich says there's not "any type of thing that could help me cope with finding him like this ... knowing that 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 released his self-titled major-label debut EP in 2018, scoring a Top 20 hit with "The Difference." He released a new song titled "Feels Like Home" in June of 2020 and debuted the video for the song exclusively via Taste of Country in August. The singer writes that he is trying to process the events that took place on New Year's Eve, which he described as "something I'll never unsee ... he looked like a young, normal kid. Someone with a family probably wondering where he was."
"Whoever you are and were," Rich concludes, "RIP Friend."
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