Authorities are searching for family members of five people who died in Jefferson County, including a man whose remains were found earlier this year off Grandview Parkway and another man who was found dead in a pond.

Their bodies are ready to be released for burial, but the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office has not yet been able to find family members for the four men and one woman.

On Saturday, Feb. 17, a man walking his dog found skeletal remains in a wooded area in the 3500 block of Grandview Parkway.

Coroner officials at the time said the remains were those of an adult but could not yet determine the race or gender.

Chief Deputy Coroner Bill Yates said investigators used DNA to identify the remains as 59-year-old Scott Kenneth Vaughn. He lived in Montgomery.

Yates said the cause of Vaughn’s cause of death has not been determined.

Vaughn was last known to be living in Montgomery in August 2023. He had past addresses in Athens, Higdon, Hazel Green and Flintstone, Ga.

Ying Redman, a 75-year-old Asian woman, died May 3 of natural causes while she was a tenant at South Health and Rehabilitation Nursing home. Redman was under the care of Affinity Hospice.

Yates said all efforts to locate family have failed. Redman’s husband is reportedly dead, and there is no other known information regarding family.

Eddie D. Head, a 68-year-old Black male, died May 27.

Head was found unresponsive in his bed at the boarding home where he lived in the 6100 block of Avenue K in Lipscomb.

There is little known about Head, Yates said, except that he was a military veteran.

Mike Anthony Shelton, a 64-year-old white male, died June 1 in Bessemer.

Shelton was a patient of Aveanna Hospice and died of natural causes.

Authorities believed Shelton lived in Phenix City, Alabama for several years. In 2020, he listed a Birmingham homeless shelter as a home address.

Samuel Woodrow Westbrook, a 58-year-old white male, died June 5.

Just before 5 p.m. on June 5, Shelton was found unresponsive floating in a pond behind a home in the 4500 block of Brookforest Lane in Irondale.

Yates said Westbrook had been living in a tent behind the home for more than a year. His cause of death has not yet been determined.

Westbrook listed past home addresses in Odenville, Pell City, Moody, Branchville, Columbiana, and most recently in Trussville.

Family members are asked to call the coroner’s office at 205-930-3603.