UPDATE: Missing man’s body found in drainage ditch

By Brandi Watters, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer

January 05, 2009 07:29 pm

— ALEXANDRIA — The body of a missing Summitville man, Michael Zalinski, 22, was discovered in a drainage ditch on Monday after a Summitville city worker noticed Zalinski’s truck sticking out of a ravine four miles east of Alexandria.
Zalinski was reported missing shortly after he left a Yorktown party in the early morning hours on Dec. 20 and failed to return home to Summitville where he lived with his girlfriend, Stephanie Shipley, and her two children.
Shipley’s sister, Christine Hazelwood, contacted The Herald Bulletin on Dec. 31 about her missing friend and said he suffered from Crohn’s disease, an inflammation of the digestive tract that can be painful without medication.
Zalinski was reportedly intoxicated when he left the Yorktown party on Dec. 20, according to police who talked to those in attendance at the party.
On Monday morning, Summitville city workers Tom Marshall and Bobby Yeagy were searching the likely path that Zalinski took home on Dec. 20 and noticed his white 1995 Chevrolet Dually in the center of a soybean field at the intersection of Indiana 28 and County Road 400 East.
The truck had plunged into the drainage ditch, directly south of Indiana 28, after leaving the roadway on County Road 400 East and driving around the soybean field, according to Madison County Sheriff Ron Richardson.
When the truck was discovered, the driver’s side door was open and Zalinski was missing.
A tracking dog from the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department was brought in to locate Zalinski and a state police helicopter circled farm fields at 10 a.m. Monday.
By 11:30 a.m., Richardson had confirmed that clothing and possible human remains were found in a log jam about 100 feet directly east of the truck in the creek.
Zalinski’s body was removed from the creek just after noon and was taken by Frankton ambulance to Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie for an autopsy. Madison County Coroner Ned Dunnichay later confirmed that Zalinski was the person found in the ditch.
Richardson said Alexandria Fire Department personnel had to cut away brush and logs to dislodge Zalinski’s body from the log jam in the drainage ditch.
Watching from afar, Don Shipley, father of Zalinski’s girlfriend, spoke on his cell phone and relayed information to his daughter, who chose not to visit the scene of the accident.
Wayne Black lives on County Road 1150 North, which runs just south of where Zalinski was found, and said he’d seen a white object in the middle of the field for the past two weeks but never checked on the item. “I just thought it was a piece of trash,” he said.
Zalinski’s vehicle had crashed into the ditch and was upright at a diagonal angle when it was discovered.
From Black’s home, only a corner of the truck’s rear bumper was visible. “I tried to see if it was moving in the wind. I didn’t think much of it.”
Black said muddy conditions in the field prevented him from exploring the mysterious object.
The truck was removed from the drainage ditch at around 1 p.m. by McLead’s Towing of Alexandria.
Dunnichay said the results of Zalinski’s autopsy were pending on Monday and expected them to be released sometime on Tuesday.
“We should possibly know whether this was a drowning or hypothermia death,” he said.
Toxicology reports will not be available for a couple of weeks, he said.
Jan Shipley, the mother of Zalinski’s girlfriend, said the family believes Zalinski’s body would not have been found without Hendricks and attention from the local media. “He could have been out there for a year.”
Though he may have been intoxicated when he crashed his truck on Dec. 20, Jan Shipley said she knows what his intentions were when he took to the road. “He was trying to come home to her and his babies. That was his life. He loved them. He tried his best to come home. It was real slick and nasty that night, but he tried to come home.”
Shipley said she and her daughter drove along the road where he was eventually found and saw no evidence of him.
Shipley said it was not uncommon for Zalinski to use backroads when traveling. “He liked to go through the country. He loved the country.”
Shipley said her daughter had not yet been able to tell her two children about Zalinski’s passing. Zalinski was a surrogate father to the 8-year-old girl and 5-year-old boy, she said. “She can’t go home and tell her babies because she doesn’t know how. She’s all in pieces.”
Stephanie Shipley was too upset to speak with the media on Monday and Zalinski’s family could not be reached for comment.

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