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Tempe police believe they have found the body of a man who went missing earlier this week after going for a walk on a canal path near his Tempe.
According to the Tempe Police Department, Salt River Project workers found a body yesterday in the Western Canal near Kyrene and Baseline in Tempe.
The body, police say, has been preliminary identified as 47-year-old Jeff Allen Ahlers.
Ahlers was last seen about 6 a.m. Tuesday as he left his house in the 4800 block of South La Rosa Drive for his morning walk.
Ahlers, Tempe police say, never returned home.
Tempe police Sergeant Steve Carbajal told us on Wednesday that Ahlers often walked along canal paths near his home and that there was nothing out of the ordinary about his behavior before his disappearance.
Carbajal said Ahlers has a good relationship with his family and spent his time doing volunteer work with his wife, which Carbajal says was going well.
We spoke to Carbajal yesterday — before discovery of the body — and he told us he wasn’t sure whether police had sent divers into the canal to look for Ahlers.
At the time of his disappearance, police didn’t suspect foul play but now say an investigation is open and ongoing as medical examiners try to determine a cause of death.
