Family members have told media and law enforcement officials
that depression had plagued trucker Clark MacDonald for years before he
apparently took his own life in the woods near a rest area on Interstate 95.
MacDonald, a 42-year-old Land Line reader from Oakfield, ME, was found dead, hanging from a tree in the woods near the rest area on
northbound I-95 near Pittsfield. He had last been seen alive Nov. 8.
A driver for Houlton's Little Rock Express, MacDonald
reportedly did not leave a note in his rig, which was found at the rest area
about 24 hours after his last communication with his dispatcher.
Police immediately searched the area around the rest area
with dogs, but thick brush hampered their efforts, according to local newspaper
and television reports.
MacDonald's wallet, with his identification, was in his
pants when he was found hanging by a belt, according to a Maine State Police
spokesman. When MacDonald's truck was found, investigators recovered his
logbooks, paycheck and cell phone from the cab. The keys were in the ignition.
"Everything we found at the scene is consistent with a
suicide," Jeffrey Beach, a trooper with Maine State Police told the Portland
Press Herald.
A deer hunter on an all-terrain vehicle found MacDonald's
body the day before Thanksgiving.
The divorced father of an 8-year-old boy, MacDonald was
described as a "live-in caretaker" for his elderly parents.
"He's been very unhappy for about eight years," his mother
Lois MacDonald told the local newspaper.
She said her son's mood was particularly somber in the weeks
before his disappearance.
MacDonald's sister told police that the trucker was very
responsible and his co-workers could not believe he would abandon his vehicle.
The dispatcher at Little Rock Express who spoke to MacDonald
about 24 hours before he went missing said the trucker - who was supposed to be
headed south - had taken the wrong trailer and had likely turned around to go
back and pick up the correct one.
