Jake Matlock's two sons grew up playing along Minnehaha Creek. On Feb. 6, with the creek bed frozen over, they donned their headlamps and went to explore the storm tunnel that drains into the creek at 5th Ave. S. and Minnehaha Parkway. About 10 minutes up the passage, whose cobbled mouth can be glimpsed from the parkway, they found the body of a man.
They called 911, and the elder boy, 16, led emergency medical personnel to the body.
"We didn't know anything else about him, but the firefighters said that it looked like there was no sign of trauma or foul play, and that he looked like he had simply frozen to death," Matlock said.
Crime prevention specialist Jennifer Neale later informed the neighbors at 5th Avenue S. that police had found personal items in the tunnel that made it seem as if the man had been living there.
The Medical Examiner's Office has not released any information about the man in the tunnel, but a Minneapolis Police report identified him as 33-year-old Shane Phillip Bennett. Little else could be determined about Bennett. Calls to potential relatives were not returned.
About a dozen residents of 5th Avenue S., including children, gathered on the frontage road above the tunnel on Sunday to pay respects to the stranger who had died quietly at the end of their street.
Longtime resident Gary Johnson recalled that following the housing market collapse of 2007, two families on the block lost their homes to foreclosure.
"It is a lot closer than we'd like to imagine," he said. "Whatever the demons are that drove that man to live underground, we'll never understand but know that it can happen."
