The body of a Cody man who has been missing since Easter was located on Thursday afternoon in a parked car at Yellowstone Regional Airport.
That’s also where Shawn Ezekiel Hughes, 36, was last spotted on video surveillance on April 5.
It’s not clear yet how he died, said Lt. Juston Wead with the Cody Police Department, but an autopsy is scheduled for Friday.
At this point, Wead said there’s no indication of foul play or self-harm.
“The cause of death is still under investigation,” Wead said.
Hughes was located in a vehicle in the parking lot by detectives Thursday during a subsequent search of cars in the lot.
They had returned to check the area with a drone and on foot in the area of the lot where he was last spotted by airport cameras.
Detectives had earlier walked up and down rows looking into cars when Hughes was first reported missing but did not see him at that time, Wead said.
“The Cody Police Department extends its deepest condolences to Shawn’s family and loved ones during this difficult time,” the department said in a release.
‘Full Of Life’
Hughes had been living in Cody for the past four years after moving with his longtime girlfriend from North Carolina to take a summer job at an area resort.
His family was shocked and saddened by the news as they try to piece together what might have happened, his sister Delicia Pagan said by phone from her home in Charlotte, North Carolina.
She said she was still in shock after hearing the news from her brother, who has been communicating with police.
“He was so full of life,” she said. “He was a good guy who liked to have fun and was fun to be around. He always laughing, joking and positive, and was a good father too.”
She has so many questions about what happened and how he ended up in the car.
Acting Completely Out Of Character
The morning he disappeared, Hughes appeared to be having a mental health episode, his girlfriend Diaka Kaba previously told Cowboy State Daily.
She said he’d been experiencing undiagnosed seizures for the past year, which had seemingly manifested into mental health issues for the past week leading up to Easter.
He’d had a seizure the night before he vanished, Kaba said, but seemed to have recovered that evening.
That changed early Sunday morning when she woke up to find Hughes having an imaginary phone call with his cousins in North Carolina, she said.
After falling back asleep, Kaba woke a few hours later to police banging on her front door to tell her Hughes was out in the street without his shirt and had been knocking on neighbors’ doors asking to use their cellphones.
He was taken by ambulance to the emergency room, but refused treatment, and instead asking staff to call a cab to take him to the airport so he could go home to North Carolina.
Authorities said that Hughes had sat in the airport lobby for an extended period of time, Wead said, before heading out into the parking lot where he began to act erratically, prompting staff to call police.
By the time police arrived, however, Hughes was gone.
He was spotted on surveillance video heading southeast out of the parking lot on toward Meeteetse.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
