Man found dead in woods was booted from Coast Guard academy

A man whose death in the western Maryland woods is being investigated by homicide detectives was a former U.S. Coast Guard cadet who was booted from the academy in 2014 following a sexual-assault investigation, authorities said Thursday.

Following the disciplinary action, Alexander Stevens went home to Frostburg and enrolled at Frostburg State University, university spokeswoman Elizabeth Medcalf said. He attended last fall, majoring in engineering, but had not enrolled for the spring semester, she said.

His body, showing signs of undisclosed trauma, was found Wednesday morning on a mountain logging road that leads to a high, rocky overlook in the Savage River State Forest, about 140 miles west of Baltimore.

Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley said investigators hope to further question a woman who walked out of the woods with hypothermia and reported Stevens missing shortly before his body was found. The same woman reportedly was with Stevens the previous evening, Shipley said. Police have not released her name.

“We’re not ruling anything out, we’re looking at all possibilities here,” Shipley said.

Stevens attended the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, after graduating from Frostburg’s Mountain Ridge High School in 2010. In 2013, a lower-ranking female cadet accused him of entering her barracks room while she was sleeping, reaching under a blanket and touching her thigh. Stevens maintained he was drunk and mistook the room for his girlfriend’s. After an investigation, he was “disenrolled” from the academy in July 2014 as part of a non-judicial punishment, academy spokesman David Santos said.

Stevens was charged in January 2016 with drunken driving and other offences in connection with a crash but was found not guilty, according to online court records.