Man found dead on Sorin St. identified; death being investigated

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -

The St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Unit has identified the man found dead Saturday morning on the 1200 block of Sorin Street in South Bend.

“It’s kind of crazy,” David Wilson, who lives around the corner, said. “We were told that it was kind of a rough neighborhood when we first moved in, but they said it was kind of on an up-swing, so we didn’t really expect anything. It’s been really quiet ever since we’ve moved in.”

But Saturday morning, Wilson and Christi Wyble, who moved into their home last October, found themselves just around the corner from a possible murder scene.

“We thought we were safe, and now, we’re a little worried,” Wyble said.

The St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Unit said South Bend Police found Jodie Henderson, 27, dead behind a white Chevy SUV just before 7 a.m. Saturday after getting a call of a “man down.”

ABC57 was first on the scene right after police arrived.

“Obviously the scene there was quite extensive,” Metro Homicide Commander Tim Corbett said. “A lot of blood.”

The area was immediately taped off as police and Metro Homicide began investigating.

“We’ve done two search warrants so far,” Corbett said. “We’ve extended the crime scene out from where the body was to approximately four blocks, and that was due to a track by a [police] dog that we had to follow.”

Corbett said police had interviewed between 15 and 20 people about Henderson’s death, as of Saturday afternoon, but no one has been arrested.

“And we do have a person that we’re actively seeking right now to talk to,” Corbett said.

Wilson and Wyble said they often see police and ambulances responding to small incidents on Sorin Street, but they never thought something this extreme would happen so close to home.

“It’s kind of scary to know, basically, it’s in your backyard,” Wyble said. “And, you know, how safe are you at night?”

According to Corbett, Henderson’s death is being investigated as a homicide, but that – along with the cause of death – won’t be confirmed until an autopsy is completed either Sunday or Monday.

This is the first homicide investigation of 2016 in South Bend. 

In the obituary posted to Hahn Funeral Homes, the person who wrote the obituary called Henderson's death the result of a hate crime.