The human remains found in East Chicago in February were recently identified as 23-year-old Davione Comanse.
Indiana State Laboratory confirmed DNA results that Amber Broadnax is Comanse’s mother May 14, according to a news release from the Lake County Coroner’s Office. Broadnax filed a missing person’s report after she hadn’t heard from or seen her son after Sept. 23, 2022, according to the release.
“We are grateful for closure as it has been almost 2 years of not knowing,” Broadnax wrote about her son on a Gofundme page to raise money for his funeral. “To know him is to love him.”
East Chicago officers were called around 5 p.m. Feb. 4 to 149th Place and Parrish Avenue for possible human remains found near the railroad tracks, according to a release issued Monday. There, they spoke to a man who said he was walking in the area when he saw what looked like a human skull in the grassy area, the release said.
After the man took them to the skull, officers called in the Lake County Coroner’s Office and the Lake County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide Task Force, where further searching yielded the bottom jaw of the skull, the release said.
During a more thorough search on Feb. 5, the task force detectives found a jacket and part of a vertebrae through the assistance of a drone and cadaver K9.
“At this time, it appears the remains might have been there for quite some time,” an East Chicago Police news release said at the time. “A more accurate timeline and cause of death will be determined at a later date.”
An autopsy conducted at the Lake County Coroner’s Office on Feb. 5 determined the cause of death as a gunshot wound, and the autopsy was reaffirmed by the Director of Anthropology at the University of Indianapolis April 29, according to the coroner’s news release.
