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Alex Pinzauti, 19, was found dead on April 26th, 2008.

His death was deemed non-criminal.

The snows of a record-breaking April blizzard were still on the ground when police were called to investigate a suspicious death on the city's south side.

A man opening his front door to pick up the morning paper saw himself looking at next-day headlines when he found a dying man lying near the porch of his house near 111th Street and University Avenue at about 7:15 a.m. April 26th, 2008.

"He was alive but he was passed out on the stairs," the senior resident told the Edmonton Sun, asking not to be named. "He had no shoes and he was wearing a black shirt and pants and no undershirt."

However, the senior identified himself to the Edmonton Journal – whose morning edition led the man to his front step.

Dietrich (Dee) Dombro said he saw what he thought was a drunken student, with his head lying in smeared blood on the sidewalk, hands in the snow and feet halfway up the stairs.

"He had no shoes but his socks weren't muddy," Dombro's wife Isabell said. "It made it look like he had been deposited here."

"He gave every appearance being just a normal young chap. That's what's terrible," Isabell said, adding she covered the man with a blanket.

"I thought he was bleeding from the mouth," she added. "I noticed that he swallowed, very gently."

In later interviews the elderly couple described events of the morning.

"When [my husband] went out and came back in he said 'Hold onto your socks because there's either a drunk man or a dead man on our steps,' " Isabell recounted for CBC Edmonton.

“It's very sad that young people are getting involved in these incidents and I don’t know. I am beginning to wonder about pub life,” she told streetbox paper Metro Edmonton.

“I am worried if this man was looking for help because I can’t hear and my husband can’t see,” she said. “So, consequently, if he did knock on the door or rang the doorbell, we didn’t hear it. We were sleeping. It stresses me that he may have been asking for help.”

911 was immediately called by a passerby and emergency services quickly tended to the barely breathing man. He was pronounced dead after a short trip to the nearby University of Alberta hospital.

Isabell described the man's clothing. "All neat and clean, nothing ratty about them," she said, noting his hair was short and his face was showing just a bit of beard stubble.

"There's often people who march by here drunk," said Dee. The couple have lived in the campus area house for nearly 15 years. "If someone lies down here and he's breathing, okay, well, another drunken guy."

The discovery of the body was made 7:15 a.m. Fire crews were first to arrive on scene, followed by paramedics. Police were notified at 8:25 a.m. and two patrol cars appeared shortly after 9:00 a.m.

Sgt. Rick Martens told media the man was in his early to mid twenties.

"What's strange is that he had no footwear on," Martens noted. "He bonked his head pretty good when he hit the sidewalk. We're trying to determine exactly what happened."

Martens said there were no stab or gunshot wounds but the man did suffer trauma to his head.

Blood was found on the top and bottom steps of the stairs. A drop of blood was also found on the porch near a chair by the mailbox.

Police remained on scene throughout the day processing the surrounding area.

Alcohol may have been a factor in the man's death as Martens said a beer bottle was found across the street and there were known party and frat houses nearby.

The mystery of the shoeless man was compounded when reports came in of a pair of shoes found without their owner in front of the the Campus Court apartment building at 8617 111 Street.

Investigators soon taped off a second scene seven blocks north of where the man was found.

One of the pair of brown canvas shoes was at the side of the road ...

... while the other sat about 30 metres away on top of a wall in front of the apartment building.

Blood was also found on the sidewalk leading up to the building's front entrance.

"The investigation has led officers to a second scene where perhaps there may have been an altercation that the adult male was involved in," a police spokesman explained.

Pylons were placed over what appeared to be blood splotches at several locations between the two scenes.

The second area of interest to police is near a popular intersection on campus. Hudson Canadian Tap House manager Jay Wright told the Edmonton Journal nothing out of the ordinary took place the night before.

"But last night was surprisingly quiet for a weekend at the end of final exams," he said. "The day was really busy, but the night was quiet."

However, a woman named Anne said she heard some noise and fighting early in the morning. She didn't look out because the ruckus was normal for the area – especially on weekends.

"There was a whole lot of fighting going on around this area last night ... might have between around four, five o'clock. It was loud, it was loud.

"It's the normal thing that has been happening here," she said. "They use the back alley as the public bathroom. And last night it was really loud."

Homicide detectives were involved in the investigation, standard practice in cases when cause of death is not obvious.

Police said the people who lived in the home where the man was found did not know the victim.

By evening it was announced that investigators had spoken to a "person of interest." No other details were released.

On April 28th media identified the victim found as 19-year-old Alex Pinzauti.

According to friends, the Slave Lake man had recently been hired by a semi-trailer manufacturing firm.

They said they don't know anyone who might have wanted to hurt Pinzauti and they also didn't know if he was in trouble with anybody. What Pinzauti was doing in the Garneau area also remains unknown.

Few additional details were released in the day since he was discovered. Police stated they believe Pinzauti had been involved in a fight prior to his death.

By the afternoon of the 28th an autopsy had been performed. Police withheld the results for a day and then announced Pinzauti's death was non-criminal.

While the man's name had been published in media reports, no such identification was made by authorities.

Details regarding the owner-less shoes and possible connections between where Pinzauti was found and the secondary crime scene were not released.

"Because it's non-criminal, we won't be disclosing any further details," said a police spokesman.

The Edmonton Sun took it upon itself to check with the medical examiner's office.

"The final cause and manner of his death are pending further lab tests," said Dennis Caufield, senior investigator. "Three to four months for this kind of work."

Caufield said his office is cautious in what it reveals to family members in such cases as ongoing tests could reveal new evidence.

"It can cause significant grief to families if they're thinking one thing and then they learn something else later on," he told the Sun.

"We have situations where we see significant health issues or other injuries, and we're thinking that could be where the cause of death may land and then the toxicology comes back showing that the person overdosed on some medication."

The inconclusive results didn't sit well with those who knew Pinzauti.

Longtime friend Alyssa McSweyn told the Sun she found it "ridiculous" that no one is facing charges.

"Basically they are just saying, 'Oh, he got beaten to death, oh well,' " she said. "I believe it should be murder or at least attempted murder ... they left him to die."

deadmonton 2008 - alex pinzauti