LATEST UPDATE | Pasco County sheriff's officials are ending a search for a body at Green Key Park in New Port Richey.
"After an exhaustive search of Green Key Park, no body has been located and the park will be reopening, " Pasco County sheriff's spokesman Melanie Snow said in a statement.
Investigators plan to check out the validity of the tipster, the release added.
Pasco County sheriff's officials in partnership with New Port Richey police spent Friday and Saturday morning conducing a search at the park on the Gulf of Mexico, but nothing was found.
Authorities launched the search based on a tip about a reported body at the park.
ORIGINAL STORY | Pasco County Sheriff's investigators are currently searching for a body at Green Key Beach Park.
According to deputies, they are acting on a tip that a body may be buried there.
"At this point it's just a tip there's not a lot of information I can provide," Maj. Jeff Peake with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office said. "The cadaver dogs hit a certain location that indicates there is possibly decomposition in that area."
USF Professor and Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle is assisting in the dig.
"She helps us to try and locate the scene, and be able to work through, as far as the dig goes, and determine if there is in fact decomposition bones that sort of thing," Peake said. "It's very methodical, it's done with precision. It's all memorialized as we go through every step of the scene."
Kimmerle was the lead Antrhopologist in the 2012 excavation of the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Fla., a project she and her team worked on since 2012. The Dozier excavation uncovered 55 remains of children who attended the school and went missing at the school which opened in 1900 and closed in 2011 for budgetary reasons.
In that investigation, a total of seven positive DNA matches and 14 presumptive identifications have been made from the remains located at the Dozier site. Two of the DNA matches have not been previously released and are new to the public.
Due to law enforcement activity, Robert K. Rees Memorial Park on Green Key Road in New Port Richey is closed until further notice.
This is a developing story. Refresh for updates.
