A real estate agent in suburban Washington state discovered a dead body while showing a home to clients last weekend, according to police.
Police in Clark County — 20 miles north of Portland, Oregon — responded to a property in the town of Camas about the discovery on Sunday Oct. 9, according to The Olympian.
When police arrived, they discovered a dead woman with a gunshot wound. Deputies called the Major Crime Unit for a homicide investigation, according to a news release from the Clark County Sheriff’s Department.
In the process of their investigation police identified a possible person of interest. The person of interest was found dead on Oct. 10, by “what investigators believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” according to the release.
Police said the investigation is ongoing with help from several police departments in Oregon.
The incident highlights the danger real estate agents face on the job while working in secluded locations.
Twenty-three percent of respondents to a 2020 National Association of Realtors poll said they work in fear and 60,000 annually are victims of violent crimes like assault, sexual abuse, rape, robbery or murder. Eighty-four percent of respondents to a 2021 NAR survey said that they felt unsafe on the job or feared for the safety of their personal information, and 41 percent reported an incident during a showing last year.
Despite this, attacks on real estate agents remain rare, with fewer than 1 percent of respondents reporting being attacked or robbed last year, according to the 2021 NAR survey. Identity theft was listed as the most commonly reported crime, affecting 2 percent of male agents and 1 percent of female agents.