
DATE: Tuesday, May 13, 1997                 TAG: 9705130268

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   62 lines

ANOTHER BODY DISCOVERED AT PORTMOUTH'S SPSA PLANT

A woman's body was discovered at 7:30 a.m. Monday on a conveyor line at a Southeastern Public Service Authority plant.

A worker at the trash-to-steam plant saw the body and immediately called supervisors. The plant was shut down while police and a medical examiner investigated.

The body was identified as a black female, but Monday evening Portsmouth police still were awaiting a report from the medical examiner's office on further information, including the woman's age and cause of death.

Felicia Blow, SPSA's public information director, said none of the employees who were present when the body was discovered wanted to speak to reporters.

The employee who found the body had been working on the tipping floor where garbage is dumped by vehicles ranging from private haulers to city garbage trucks, Blow said.

The body could have come off a vehicle from any of at least four Hampton Roads cities, she said.

The plant receives more than 1,500 tons of trash a day.

Blow said that garbage usually starts being dropped off at the SPSA plant when it opens at 7 a.m.

She said it is possible that there was already garbage on the tipping floor when the plant opened, but as a rule there should not be.

The discovery of the woman's body came less than three weeks after the burial of a baby boy's body that was found at the plant in February.

The woman's body was the seventh found since the SPSA plant on Victory Boulevard near the Norfolk Naval Shipyard opened 10 years ago.

Of the seven, three have been babies, all newborn to several days old.

A counselor helped employees deal with the grim discovery.

``Have we become desensitized to incidents like this?'' Blow said. ``The answer is a resounding, `No.'

``We go through the same emotions, the same turmoil that any person would go through experiencing something like this. And we will not accept it as a commonplace activity for work.''

Blow said counseling is provided through a Bon Secours Maryview employee assistance program.

``The initial reaction is shock,'' said Laura White, a counselor with the program. ``Then people's emotions could range anywhere from being very angry to being very sad to being completely numb.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

OTHER DISCOVERIES

Monday's discovery was the seventh body found since the SPSA

plant opened 10 years ago. Others were found in:

1991 - The dismembered torso of Janice Lee, a Chesapeake woman

who had been missing for 10 days.

1993 - Body of John Lewis, 51, of Suffolk, dumped in Norfolk and

discovered at the plant.

1994 - Body of James A. Brown, 37, of Virginia Beach.

1995 - Baby Angel Valentine, unidentified.

1996 - Baby June, unidentified.

1997 - Baby Michael, unidentified.

Anyone with information on these cases should call 488-7777 or