Man’s death, truck crash vex Washougal police

A man who was found dead by a jogger in Washougal, and a crash that happened nearby earlier that day, have puzzled local police.

The incident began Friday morning at 4:54 a.m. when a Toyota Tundra rolled backward down a steep hill on 37th Street and struck a vacant house, said Washougal police Cmdr. Allen Cook.

Right after the crash, a neighbor came outside to see what happened and saw a man in a camouflage jacket running up the street. Nobody witnessed the crash or saw anyone in the truck, but residents in the neighborhood said they heard a man and a woman talking outside minutes before the crash occurred.

A Washougal officer stayed with the truck and waited for a tow truck to arrive. A woman came up to the officer and said that while she was jogging around 6:50 a.m., she saw a man who appeared to be dead lying in some vines near the intersection of W and 37th streets.

The officer found the man, who was wearing a camouflage jacket.

“That’s how we think he was related to the truck incident somehow,” Cook said.

The dead man was identified as Daniel Woltman, 61, who is believed to have been homeless and from Vancouver. The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Officer hasn’t determined his cause of death yet. Investigators believe he died of natural causes and had pre-existing medical conditions, Cook said.

“We’re very confident he died of natural causes. We’re just trying to find out why he was there and who he was with,” Cook said. “There’s just a plethora of unanswered questions.”

The truck’s registered owner, who lives in Vancouver, was not involved in the crash and had let people borrow the vehicle. Police don’t know who was with the truck, though it’s possible it was the woman residents overheard earlier in the morning, Cook said.

“We have our suspicions, but we don’t know until we can find this mysterious person,” Cook said.