ALLEN PARK, Mich. (WJBK) -- We know the deep freeze is dangerous. Now it may have turned deadly claiming the life of a woman in Allen Park. Investigators believe the woman spent hours in the cold after wandering away from her home.
The elderly woman wasn't dressed for the weather. She was wearing a robe and slippers and collapsed in front of a house out of site from the people who live there. She laid in a ditch in the freezing cold until she died.
"It was an elderly lady. She was just in house clothes. She didn't have any kind of coat and she was in slippers. So it looked like what happened is she was wandering late in the dark and slipped in the ditch and tried to get out because one of her slippers was off," a woman explains.
A tragic discovery no one wants to make. Allen Park Police say late Wednesday morning, a man found the body of an elderly woman. She had wandered down Allen Road and into his yard.
Police say she was 87 years old.
"He was backing out of the driveway and he saw something in the ditch, and so when he took a closer look, he could see hair. So he knew that it was a body," the woman says.
The deceased's name and medical condition have not been released, but police confirm her family has been notified.
The ditch is not deep, but far enough off the road that she would've been difficult to see.
Tuesday night, metro Detroit faced subzero temperatures and the howls of the wind likely drowned out her last cries for help.
The bitter cold may have helped to preserve the crime scene. Perfectly kept footprints iced over from the cold gave police a break in the case.
"Thank goodness it was after the snowfall, so the police tracked the footprints and found that she lived back behind the church," the woman says.
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The 75-year-old grandmother charged with open murder in the shooting death of her own grandson could take the stand any day in her own defense, but Tuesday belonged to the prosecution.
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There was a last ditch effort Wednesday to save Oakman Elementary and Orthopedic School, a Detroit public school that services a high number of disabled and special needs children.
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Sabrina Gianino was found dead with a cord around her neck inside a Grosse Pointe Park home early Thursday morning. The medical examiner has ruled her death a homicide.
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A Molotov cocktail was thrown through a kitchen window of a waterfront mansion on Whittier Street in Grosse Pointe Park around 3:20 a.m. Friday. Fortunately, someone inside put it out.
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Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan urged Detroit's pastors and majority black population Friday to join him in an effort to buy neglected properties and take other steps to help revitalize the struggling city.
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