ARNAUDVILLE — Arnaudville police are working to figure out how a man's body ended up in Bayou Teche on Monday afternoon. Family members have since then identified the man as 59-year-old Dennis Hillman who lived in Arnaudville.
"He was always the fun-loving uncle," says Hillman's niece, Rosella Ross. "He was a hard worker and would give the shirt off of his back for anyone."
In between tears, Ross describes her uncle as a family man. She says she remembers him babysitting her, along with her cousins, when she was younger and always making them pancakes.
"He could make pancakes the size of the pan, and he would always fix the entire box and expect us to eat them all," she recounts. "That was the funniest and the best times that I had with him, always with my family."
Ross says that when she got a call from the coroner on Monday evening telling her they had found his body, she was shocked. She says that she didn't know he had been missing since last Thursday night.
"I just asked him if he was gone, and he told me yes," Ross says in between tears. "That was the hardest thing to hear."
We spoke with Arnaudville's Police Chief, Eddy LeCompte, who says the coroner is working to figure out a cause of death. In the meantime, the police and Ross are urging anyone with any additional information to contact the police department.
"We would just like to know, so we can have that closure as a family, and finally be able to put my Uncle Dennis to rest," says Ross.
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