Police in Maine and New Hampshire are investigating whether a man found stabbed to death Saturday in Lebanon is an 18-year-old reported missing earlier in the day from a town about 15 miles away.

Around 4 p.m. Saturday, a woman walking along Long Swamp Road in the York County town of Lebanon discovered a young man’s body. The man was not carrying any identification, however, and Maine State Police began to review missing persons reports from Maine and other New England states.

The Office of Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta conducted an autopsy Sunday and ruled the death a homicide by stabbing. Police had not yet publicly identified the man as of Sunday night but indicated a potential connection with a New Hampshire missing person’s case.

On Saturday morning, an 18-year-old man from nearby Madbury, New Hampshire, was reported missing by his parents, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. The homicide unit of the attorney general’s office mentioned both cases in a news release Sunday afternoon that also announced the cause of death of the man found in Lebanon.

Jeffery Strelzin, who heads the homicide unit, declined to provide additional information about the joint New Hampshire-Maine investigation Sunday night. Strelzin’s office said a positive identification of the body could come on Monday.

Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, confirmed that state police are assisting on the case but referred questions to Strelzin’s office. A dispatcher in the Madbury Police Department also referred questions to state authorities.

Lebanon and Madbury are located near the Maine-New Hampshire border roughly 15 miles apart.

New Hampshire media outlets reported a heavy police presence both Saturday and Sunday at a home on Evans Road in Madbury.

The Manchester Union Leader reported late Sunday that a distraught man sitting across the street from the home told a reporter that “my son died today” but that police, who were still on the scene, asked him not to discuss the incident. The unidentified man asked that his privacy be respected.

 

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