Port Orange, FL – A 28-year-old Daytona Beach woman is found dead and floating in the Intercoastal Waterway near Port Orange.
28-year-old Crystal C. Pifer was found around 7am Wednesday close to ICW marker 56 near Shamrock Drive, just north of the Dunlawton Avenue Bridge.
Her identity was released by the Port Orange Police Department after an autopsy was done Thursday by the Volusia County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The body remained in the water until investigators with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission removed it from the water and turned it over to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Port Orange Police Department Lieutenant Scott Brozio says officers responded to the Seven Seas Marina on South Peninsula Drive soon after the call for help came in and that’s when the body was found floating in a canal attached to the Halifax River.
“At this time, the incident is being investigated as a suspicious death,” Brozio added. “No determination as to the cause of death has been made at this time. The investigation is ongoing.”
POPD and the South Daytona Police Department are investigating a possible connection between this body and a report of a missing woman the night before in South Daytona.
Authorities combed part of the Halifax near South Daytona overnight for the missing woman – since identified as Pifer – before calling off the search around 2am Wednesday, 5 hours before her body was found.
According to the SDPD incident report, an officer was sent to the Riverfront Veterans Memorial Park around 10:45pm Tuesday after Pifer and her 42-year-old boyfriend allegedly got into a fight on his boat as it floated in the river.
A witness told SDPD he was paddling in his boat when Pifer jumped on board and told him her boyfriend was beating her up. Pifer then returned to her boyfriend’s boat and got into an argument as the paddler headed back to the park’s boat ramp to pick up his child, per the report.
The officer wrote in the report that she found the boat later on that night heading south on the ICW and could clearly hear that some sort of verbal argument was going on.
SDPD says the officer tried to have POPD get in contact with the people on board once the boat docked, but neither police nor Volusia County Beach Safety units searching the area was able to find the boat afterward, including a helicopter from the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.
911 dispatchers say a call came in around an hour after the officer spotted the boat, claiming that a woman – since identified as Pifer – jumped off of a boat and was swimming towards shore.
According to the SDPD report, the person who called 911 said Pifer was a “good swimmer” and police had no indication at the time that she was either in distress or that a crime of some kind had been committed.
Media requests for 911 in both cases were denied because the investigation is still active, per Brozio.
Anyone with information is asked to call POPD Detective Michael Wallace at 386-506-5885.
Pifer photos posted below are courtesy of Laurie Campagnuolo.
Copyright 2015 Southern Stone Communications.