He is white, about 30 years old, with short brown hair. He's a big man, 6 feet 2 and more than 300 pounds. On his last day of life, he chose a green shirt and khaki pants. As of Monday -- a full week after he apparently jumped to his death off a bridge near Energy Park Drive in St. Paul -- no one had called police to identify him.
His body might still be under that secluded bridge if not for his shoes and for a decent young woman with whom he is now forever linked.
Susan Lee, 24, was riding her bike home from work at the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus on July 6. It was a beautiful late afternoon, and Lee, a year-round cyclist with thick brown hair and an engaging smile, was planning to chill with her boyfriend.
Then she saw the shoes. They had been placed with seeming care, tidily, one next to the other. They pointed toward the concrete-and-wire railing on the bridge, which shuttles buses between campuses. Lee wanted not to see them, not to think about what might be below. She peered over "sort of haphazardly," she said, and saw nothing.
People flew by on bikes, in buses. No one stopped to consider the shoes.
Lee wanted to believe that, maybe, they were abandoned there by a free spirit who longed to go barefoot on a gorgeous summer day. "But it was so hot on the cement," she said. "It didn't add up."
She carefully pulled herself up onto the concrete barrier, higher this time, balanced against the wire, and looked over.
"I called police right away," Lee said.
