Authorities are investigating the death of a hiker in Hocking Hills State Park as a potential homicide, officials with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said in a news release yesterday.
Investigators with ODNR said in the release that there is some evidence that a falling branch that killed 44-year-old Chillicothe resident Victoria Schafer "wasn't a natural occurrence" and that there may have been hikers on the hillside above her location who dislodged it.
The branch struck and killed Schafer while she was on stairs near Old Man's Cave, a park landmark, at about 5:30 p.m. Monday.
The Hocking County Sheriff's Office and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation are working with the ODNR on the case.
Schafer was a mother of four. Hers was the third death this year in state recreation areas near Hocking Hills. Twenty-two-year-old Alexander Cristin Colson died Aug. 24 after he fell from a cliff near Old Man's Cave. And in June, authorities found the body of Dana M. Busson, 55, in nearby Conckles Hollow State Nature Preserve.
