PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Investigators have released the name of a man found dead in a Presque Isle apartment building Thursday.
The man was William Anderson, said Lindsey Chasteen, administrator at the chief medical examiner’s office in Augusta, late Wednesday afternoon.
Anderson’s cause of death is still being studied, Chasteen said.
Presque Isle police were called to an unattended death at a 17 Parsons St. apartment on Thursday. There they discovered Anderson, as well as a suspicious package.
Following normal procedure, they notified the Maine State Police bomb squad, who arrived from Portland. The object turned out to be a pipe bomb, which the explosives team removed from the residence and safely detonated away from the public, Presque Isle Police Chief Laurie Kelly said Wednesday.
Although the unattended death did not seem to be related to the bomb, local police turned the case over to state investigators.
Anderson was not from Aroostook County, but was working in the area, Kelly said.
During Thursday’s investigation, police blocked off portions of Parsons and Dyer streets near the residence, around the area of Machias Savings Bank and intersections with Park and Mechanic streets. The area was blocked for several hours.
Wilbur Clark, 68, who lives a few houses away, said Tuesday that he left the area for about two hours that day as police had advised him. He did not know Anderson but said he saw him walk every day to an apparently abandoned building across the street.
Other residents in the neighborhood who responded to questions Tuesday said they did not know Anderson or in which apartment at 17 Parsons St. the death had occurred.
The building once housed Seacoast Security and before that, for many years, was the home of Goan’s Electric.
Reporter Melissa Lizotte contributed to this story.