Body found on Bellingham waterfront ID’d as WWU student

A body found off a dock in Bellingham has been confirmed as Western Washington University freshman Dwight Clark, of Auburn, who has been missing for more than a week. Mark Young, spokesman for the Bellingham Police Department, said Clark’s driver’s license was found on the body. “There’s no reason to believe it’s not him,” Young said. Young said the body was found this morning floating in a log lagoon on property owned by the Port of Bellingham. It was found by a man planting eel grass, who contacted the port. Port officials called police. Young said the body had been in the water from some time. He said the area was searched earlier as part of the massive search for Clark, 18, who has been missing since Sept. 26 after he left a party six blocks from his university dorm. The area was searched by air and by dogs, but Young said the body might have been under a dock or under a log boom and was undetected. “This just shows the magnitude of the area that is at hand,” Young said. He said he contacted Clark’s mother to let her know they’d found a body in the water and to prepare her. Earlier, police were looking into a message scrawled on a poster for Clark to see if it’s credible. The message, written on a poster hanging outside a store, said Clark had been stabbed to death.