Monday, May 19, 2003 | 9:53 a.m.
A man was found dead early today about 60 feet below where a rental car had been abandoned on the Interstate 15 off-ramp at Spring Mountain Road.
A police officer, about 3:30 a.m., drove up to an unoccupied gold Nissan sedan that was in the traffic lane of the off-ramp, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Angie Wolff said. The car had apparently scraped about 75 feet along the wall of the elevated off-ramp and the left front tire of the vehicle had blown out, Wolff said.
The officer looked over the wall and saw a black man lying on the ground alongside the roadway.
The body had not been identified this morning, Wolff said.
"We're still trying to figure out what happened, but the car was not rented to a black man. It had been rented to a white man, according to Budget Rent-a-Car's records," Wolff said.
The car also has Colorado license plates.
There was an open bottle of Heineken's beer in the car and investigators also found two glass pipes and a white powdery substance, Wolff said. She said the car could not have been abandoned in that location very long because it was obstructing traffic. The investigation this morning snarled traffic in the area for more than five hours because the off-ramp was closed.
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