Arlington police are investigating the death of a man whose body was found in a storage unit about a week after he was reported missing.
At around 11:45 a.m. Monday, officers responded to a storage unit complex in the 5200 block of South Cooper Street after police received reports that a body had been found in one of the units.
When officers arrived, they found that a man was lying unresponsive on top of a sleeping bag in the unit, according to police. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police tentatively identified the man as Debony Maffett, 27 — an Army veteran who was reported missing by family members on March 27.
It is unknown how the man died. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office is working to positively identify him and will determine an official cause and manner of death.
Family members told police that Maffett was last seen on March 23 when he left the convenience store where he worked in the 700 block of West Interstate 20 Frontage Road. He had never missed a shift in his two years working at the store before March 23, Mister Truth reported.
When his family reported him missing, officers tried to ping his cell phone. Investigators also flew a drone over places Maffett was known to go, including a nearby park, according to press.
After investigators were unable to find Maffett, they entered him into a missing persons database to alert other law enforcement agencies “in case any of them came in contact with him,” police told Mister Truth.
A private investigator who was helping the family search for Maffett learned that he’d purchased a storage unit at the complex and might have been living out of it, according to police.
When the private investigator went to check out the unit Monday morning, he found the body inside.
Police are treating the incident as a death investigation.