YOUGNSTOWN — Police are looking into a cold case from the late 1980s after receiving a call that skeletal remains with police tags were found at the Youngstown State University anthropology department.

Detective Sgt. Dave Sweeney, who works on missing persons and also has started looking at cold cases at the Youngstown Police Department, said he received the call last Friday and began doing research to trace the origin of the bones.

He believes the remains in question were given to YSU’s anthropology department in September of 1987, shortly after they were discovered by a 71-year-old and his 11-year-old grandson while hunting squirrels in a wooded area off Liberty Road on Youngstown’s East Side, based on a Vindicator article from Sept. 12, 1987.

Dr. Gary Fry, a biological anthropologist at YSU at the time, believed the remains referred to in that article were those of a black man between 25 and 30 years old, according to another Vindicator article from October 1987. Fry estimated the person had died between two and six years prior, placing the death roughly between 1979 and 1985.

The man to whom the remains belonged had a stocky build and was about 5-foot-four-inches, according to Fry’s report.

Loren Lease, a current associate professor of anthropology at YSU, confirmed a report that a skull and additional bones of a skeleton, including two clavicles, are among the remains returned to the police department. She was not able to comment further as the analysis of the remains is ongoing.

Theresa Gaetano of the Mahoning County coroner’s office and Kurt Wright, a fire investigator with the Youngstown Fire Department who also sits on the Homicide Task Force, are working on the case, according to Sweeney. The Mahoning County coroner’s office could not be reached for comment Friday night.

Sweeney added that a member of the Ohio BCI task force is consulting, as well as an ondontologist. Forensic ondontologists are trained dentists who help identify human remains.

The original newspaper article Sweeney found said that police dug down about a foot to gather the remains, though most were at the surface. A skull, portions of a vertebrae and pelvis, and rib bones were among those found, the article states.

At the time, police were asking anyone with information to come forward. Now, they are asking again — anyone with information can call police at 330-747-7911 or Gaetano at 330-740-2175 ext. 7310.