He was found dead in the woods near his apartment on Monday afternoon, police said.
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His body was found in a wooded area near his apartment Monday afternoon by two Middletown boys, ages 8 and 10, who were playing hide-and-seek, one of the boy’s mothers said.
At first, Melissa Martin said, she didn’t believe her son until he took her to the body.
Her son was extremely upset and she doesn’t want him playing in that area again, she said.
“It’s just terrible,” Martin said. “No child should ever have to see that.”
Blatchford-Dickerson was holding onto a tree with his left hand and his right hand was holding a green plastic cup, police said.
It appeared he had been dead for “some time,” according to the police report.
The manner and cause of death of Blatchford-Dickerson are pending, according to the Butler County Coroner’s Office. An autopsy was performed Tuesday afternoon, but it will take weeks before the toxicology test results are complete, according to the coroner’s office.
Blatchford-Dickerson and his fiancee, Rebecca Doss, 21, were scheduled to be married in a small ceremony in December, she told the Journal-News. She doesn’t believe her fiance, a recovering heroin addict, overdosed.
“He never would have left me,” she said Tuesday through tears.
She said her fiance took an Uber to work in Monroe on Friday morning. But when he arrived to work, he was sent home because he was “still intoxicated,” according to the Middletown police report.
A co-worker dropped him off at a fast-food restaurant on North Verity Parkway, a short distance from his apartment, the report said.
Doss said she checked with several businesses on Verity Parkway and employees told her Blatchford-Dickerson showed up drunk, so they refused to serve him.
That was the last time she saw him, she said.
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