PJ police are investigating the death of a 50-year-old man whose severely decomposed body was found in a ditch, two-metres deep, on an abandoned factory site in Lamas, in the borough of Sátão (Viseu) on Saturday night. According to reports, they are working on the assumption that the man was part of a gang that had been stealing copper in the area. A stolen car had been found a few days earlier outside the factory, and it is this that is understood to be the link to theories of a copper-stealing gang.
But why this supposed member of the team should have ended up dead in a ditch is still unclear.
Sátão fire chief Carlos Sousa explained the body had to be retrieved with the use of a JCB and that the work was “arduous”.
The man’s body has now been taken for autopsy at Viseu’s Institute of Legal Medicine.