An autopsy planned for Monday morning on a woman who was found dead Sunday in a ditch next to Route 102 in Southwest Harbor has been delayed, according to police.
The autopsy is now expected to be done sometime Monday afternoon, Maine State Police spokesperson Shannon Moss said. She did not say why it was delayed.
It’s unclear how the woman died or how her body ended up on the side of the road.
Police have not released any details about the death since Sunday evening, when they said a long stretch of Route 102 was closed while Maine State Police investigators combed the area for clues. The closed road was north of Southwest Harbor’s downtown village on a section of Carroll’s Hill between the IGA supermarket and Acadia National Park.
A passerby contacted police after seeing the woman’s body in the ditch at around 11:30 a.m. Sunday, police said.
Although police said the woman’s body was found near 61 Main Street,no such address appears in the town’s online property tax assessment records. Main Street in Southwest Harbor follows Route 102 from where Bass Harbor and Seawall roads intersect south of downtown to the boundary of Acadia National Park at the top of Carroll’s Hill.
Vehicles traveling between the Mount Desert village of Someville and Southwest Harbor were re-routed around the western shore of MDI through Pretty Marsh and Seal Cove. The closed section of Route 102 was reopened to traffic Sunday night.
If police determine that the death was a homicide, it will be the first on MDI since 2018, when Bar Harbor resident Mikaela Conley was found dead near the intersection of West and Eden streets in downtown Bar Harbor. That killing also occurred in early June, near the unofficial start of the island’s busy summer tourist season.
Although not on MDI, a South Portland woman was killed last June in Acadia National Park at Schoodic Point when her boyfriend allegedly ran her over with his car and killed her. Raymond Lester, 36, of Portland, has been charged with murder in Mokeme’s death.
There have been two homicides in Southwest Harbor in the past 25 years.
Jacqueline Evans, 83, died in January 2006 after she was attacked in her home in the local village of Manset.
In December 1998, Andrea Lockhart was killed by her estranged husband, Stephen Lockhart, at a Manset boatyard when he struck her with a block of wood during an argument.
