Madison Police and the Dane County Coroner’s office identified the homicide victim found on South Park Street as 31-year-old Joel A. Marino during a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

According to a police report, Marino was found in an alley at the 700 block of South Park Street Monday afternoon and was taken to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead. Police declared the incident a homicide, the city’s first in 2008.

An autopsy revealed that Marino died of “multiple penetrating wounds from a sharp instrument,” according to Dane County Coroner John Stanley. He said at the news conference the exact type of instrument used was not yet known.

Marino lived in the neighborhood where he was killed, and detectives are investigating the possibility the crime was committed inside his home, according to a police report.

Police said they could not rule out that the murder was a random act at this point in the investigation.

Police are asking for the public’s help in locating a “person of interest,” a man who was last seen in the area around the time of the crime. Police describe him as being 6’ to 6’1,” and he was last seen wearing a white stocking cap with a red “W” on the front and a tan sheepskin-like jacket. He was also carrying a gray, new looking backpack.

“It’s quite out of the ordinary,” City Council President Mike Verveer said Monday after the incident. He said the neighborhood where the crime occurred, near St. Mary’s Hospital and the Lake Monona shore, is known as a generally safe area with little violent crime.

Ald. Julie S. Kerr, District 13, who represents the area in which the killing took place, said at the conference Marino was a “really decent guy” and noted her constituents’ fears regarding the murder.

“People are very concerned,” Kerr said.