WAYNE CO.—Questions still surround the December death of a Wayne County man with family in neighboring Clay.
And while Wayne County coroner Jimmy Taylor has issued a preliminary cause of death for Thomas Sharp, 55, of Golden Gate: That of hypothermia.
But how Sharp was found, and the condition of his personal effects, have been what has prompted most questions…and now, family is awaiting toxicology reports to see just what might have prompted Sharp to be where he was in the first place.
Family has advised Disclosure that Sharp, whose kin hails mostly from Clay County to the north of Wayne, was last seen on the evening of Thursday, Dec. 11, when he had taken his four-wheeler to a friend’s house in the village of Golden Gate to hang out with friends and drink with them.
He departed that residence at an unknown time, leaving on his four-wheeler. Any state of intoxication is unknown…or went unmentioned by authorities investigating the matter.
His girlfriend, Karla Hayes Morse, who lived with him in Golden Gate, had received a call from Sharp that Thursday evening, telling her he was on his way home…but he never arrived.
She went to work on Friday the 12th, without Sharp ever getting in.
When she arrived home from work later that day, she noticed it didn’t appear Sharp had been home at all, so Morse began making calls as to his whereabouts, and driving around the Golden Gate area (which sits north of the section of Wayne County known as Pond Creek), looking for him.
Ultimately, Morse reported Sharp missing early Saturday, reportedly after she had called his son Marty (who was reportedly in New York) to advise that his father couldn’t be found.
Upon the missing persons report, Wayne County authorities took action, with fire department volunteers manning boats in the area—necessitated because the backwaters had come up that week from the previous weekend’s rains. They also provided sonar for the water search. The volunteers roved the area of north Pond Creek for about three hours Saturday, Dec. 13.
Illinois State Police was called in to provide an aerial search of the area later that day.
While the official search was suspended at that time, searches continued to be conducted on Sunday the 14th, this involving predominately friends and other volunteers in fishing boats and canoes.
Throughout this time frame, the only thing that was found was Sharp’s four-wheeler, this by firefighters. It was located about a hundred yards into the backwater on an oil lease road not far from the village of Golden Gate. The key was missing from the ignition.
Backwater had continued to fall over the weekend, and ultimately, at about 5 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, Dec. 17, volunteers located Sharp’s body in a drainage ditch north of where the four-wheeler had been located.
Officials and family alike confirmed that it appeared Sharp had left his four-wheeler after it became stranded in the backwater, and was trying to walk away from it and back toward the village when he stepped into the drainage ditch, which was very deep by comparison to the floodwaters where the lease road he’d gotten stuck on.
Family advised that Sharp’s shoes were caked with mud; this apparently from treading through the backwater-soaked country road and its surrounds.
However, Wayne County Coroner Jimmy Taylor, upon conducting the autopsy, told family that Sharp hadn’t drowned. There was, they reported, no water in his lungs. Instead, the official cause of death was reported as hypothermia.
So family was left to wonder how the series of events played out: Was it so dark that Sharp, having wandered out of the backwater, simply tumbled down an embankment with mud-caked shoes that made his trek hazardous, and lay drenched at the side of the drainage ditch in the cold of the overnight hours (where temps dipped into the low 20s from Thursday into Friday), then the floodwaters came up?
It appears that might have been the case, since family reported that Sharp’s wallet was “wet only on the outside edges…and not even the ink was smeared on any of the contents.”
Whatever the situation, this time, the criticism isn’t on the search effort. Wayne County officials as well as ISP were reported going above and beyond in their attempt to locate the man.
Now, the waiting for toxicology—which will show blood alcohol content—is on, and certain family members have opined that this may have all bearing on Sharp’s ability to have extricated himself from whatever situation he found himself in on the evening of December 11. And while the entire matter is a tragedy, authorities are stating that no foul play is indicated in the death of Thomas Sharp.
Toxicology often takes months to come back from the state lab, so be watching the pages of Disclosure or disclosurenewsonline.com for information on it.