Police continued their search Friday for the body of a missing man whose car they realized Thursday was one of seven found submerged near the Burnt Mills Pumping Station during heavy rains early June 26.
Meanwhile, police were trying to determine the identity of a badly decomposed body found by Prince George’s County police Tuesday in the Northwest Branch Creek bed just over the Montgomery County line.
The body has been sent to the Office of the Medical Examiner, a Prince George’s Police spokesman said.
Jeremy Wechsler, 22, of the 13900 block of Castle Boulevard in Silver Spring, disappeared after leaving work at a Potomac Dominos at about 11 p.m. June 25. He called his roommate, whom police would not name, shortly after midnight. The roommate believed Weschler was on his way home, Baur said.
His family reported him missing June 27. The Burnt Mills station is upstream from where authorities discovered the body in the Northwest Branch Creek.
As much as 10 inches of rain began to fall in parts of Montgomery County that weekend.
“It had been raining all day,” said Geoffrey Palcher, the night manager at Domino’s, where Wechsler delivered pizzas for three years. Flooding had caused Wechsler’s car to nearly stall out during an earlier delivery that day, he said.
“He had taken a couple of deliveries after he stalled out, so he was pretty sure it was OK,” Palcher said.
Police said they did not know until Thursday that one of the cars, a 2002 blue Chevrolet Cavalier, towed from the Burnt Mills Pumping Station area at about 7 a.m. June 26 was Wechsler’s because its license plate number was recorded one digit off from the car’s actual number.
Police discovered the error when a hand search of towed vehicles Thursday turned up a car with a description similar to that of Weschler’s. An internal investigation will be conducted, said Montgomery County police spokeswoman Lucille Baur.
“We own up that it was a police department error,” Baur said. “We know that we were in an emergency mode at that time.”
Because the car was not discovered until Thursday, police did not draw what Baur said could be a possible connection to the body until Friday.
Without a positive identification, police searched areas near the pumping station, located off Colesville Road, to Interstate 495 and from the interstate to Piney Branch Road. Friday’s search uncovered a Domino’s work shirt embroidered with the name “Jeremy” on south side of the Northwest Branch Creek between Colesville Road and University Boulevard.
“We’re not ruling out the possibility that Jeremy could still be alive,” Baur said.
Wechsler’s mother would not comment Friday. He has been described as someone who was always in close contact.
Palcher said Wechsler had been named employee of the year at the restaurant two years in a row.
“The last thing he said to me that night was that he’d see me tomorrow,” Palcher said. “I worked the next day, and when he was late for work I knew something was wrong.”
