DURHAM - Durham police investigators pulled a man's body from a swampy area behind several apartment complexes in North Durham Friday afternoon -- four days after chasing him there.

Aubrey Dean, 27, of Lindbergh Street in Durham had also been reported missing by his family Wednesday, Durham police officials said in a press release Friday evening.

According to authorities, officers responded to a call from an apartment complex in the 2500 block of South Roxboro Street at 8:20 p.m. Monday about males possibly selling drugs in the area. Officers approached a burgundy Chevrolet Caprice at the complex, asking for identification from the car's occupants.

A search on Dean's identification showed he was wanted on a probation violation. N.C. Department of Correction records show Dean had been on parole since January 2006 for robbery with a dangerous weapon. He was reclassified as an absconder Jan. 17, 2007.

Department of Correction records also show Dean served five months for a common-law robbery in 1998, and three years and seven months for conspiracy to commit armed robbery that ended in March 2003.

Dean ran into the woods near Weaver Street after officers tried to take him into custody. After they lost sight of him in the woods, the release states, a police dog tracked him to a creek but lost his trail there.

A dog trained to find bodies helped officers find Dean's body in a creek area about a mile into the woods. Officials would not say Friday night whether he had been found in or near the creek.

His body was sent to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for an autopsy.