Very late on Friday night, William Clay spoke to his younger sister, Sophia, telling her that he had a slight headache but was looking forward to celebrating his 56th birthday the next day.
“He sounded like he was in a good mood ... He sounded happy. He told me he loved me and would see me soon,” Sophia Clay said, saying her phone call with her brother ended about midnight.
William Clay hasn’t been seen alive or heard from since, she said, and added that family members are “totally certain” that he is the man whose body was found in the snow near Kensington and Bailey avenues early Saturday morning.
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“People posted a picture of the body on Facebook that is very upsetting to our family. That’s his hat, his coat. That’s my brother,” Sophia Clay said. “The body was found about a block from his home, and he hasn’t been in touch with anyone since.”
She said she is going to the Erie County Morgue on Monday to identify the body.
The family has started a GoFundMe account to raise money for William Clay’s burial. The link to the fundraising effort is https://gofund.me/4ec555d2.
“My brother was loved by a lot of people. He died on his birthday,” said Sophia Clay, also a Buffalo resident.
She said her older brother is survived by two sons and seven brothers and sisters.
William Clay was a lifelong Buffalo resident who played football for Burgard Vocational High School and was a retired truck driver.
She described him as an avid reader of the Bible, a practitioner of karate and an enthusiastic Buffalo Bills fan. She also said he loved watching movies about karate and the Wild West.
“He was a man who worked and owned his own home in that neighborhood. He was nice to people, loved his family and loved talking to people. He was not homeless,” his sister said.
She said “some very misleading” information about her brother has been circulated on social media and in the news media since his death. Newspapers in New York City and England are among those that have published stories identifying William Clay as the man whose body was found at Bailey and Kensington.
Sophia Clay said she does not know how her brother died, but she believes he had gone out on foot early Saturday morning – most likely to buy some pain relief medicine for his headache and some food items to tide him over during the storm.
His body was found near a convenience store at Kensington and Bailey sometime around 2 a.m., but authorities did not pick up his body until around 9 p.m. Saturday, Sophia Clay said.
“We kept calling Buffalo Police all day Saturday, and nobody got back to us. I understand that it was a crew from the county morgue that finally picked up his body. It was out there in the snow all day,” she said.
She added that family members are upset by the way the situation was handled by authorities.
She said she believed her brother underestimated the severity of the storm when he went out early Saturday morning.
The Buffalo News reached out to city and county officials for response. City officials as of 3 p.m. Sunday had not returned messages from The News.
A county spokesman, Peter Anderson, said the county was notified about the body at 11:40 a.m. Saturday.
Anderson said he did not know whether there was any long delay in getting to the body, but told The News county emergency crews have been inundated with calls for assistance during the furious blizzard that hit the county on Friday.
“My brother had a lot of people who cared for him. He is going to be missed immensely,” Sophia Clay said.
Cars are buried in snow on Christmas Day in the Elmwood Village in Buffalo.
