Updated at 6:11 p.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
The man found dead on a Centralia street yesterday has been identified as 64-year-old Anthony Fries.
He is a Centralia resident who lived in the vicinity of where his body was discovered early yesterday morning, laying along the 100 block of East Third Street, just off North Tower Avenue.
An autopsy conducted this morning concluded Fries died from cardiac-related issues.
Centralia police said yesterday that they found signs of trauma and that Fries did not die from natural causes.
The death was suspicious in part because it occurred outdoors, Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod said.
Since there were no witnesses, police and the coroner’s office pursued the case in the same way they would have if a crime had occurred, according to McLeod.
The “trauma” was minor abrasions, he said, which the doctor found consistent with collapsing onto the pavement after a massive cardiac event.
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CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the victim’s last name. The coroner initially released his last name incorrectly, because of a typo.