Talk about a mistaken case of identity!
These cleaners mistakenly identified this dead body as something fake when it was actually real!
A pair of cleaners were hired this past Thursday to clean up a house that had recently been evicted of its former tenants, and when the hired help showed up to the home in Spring Hill, Florida, they found a lot of awful stuff including a lot of dead rodents!
When they discovered a human body, later revealed to be Jeremy Witfoth, they thought the corpse was actually a mannequin and proceeded to haul the body down to a local dump!
They believed that the former tenants were playing a bad joke out of anger for being kicked out – something the property owner also thought when they saw the body hanging in the garage the day before! Here’s what police said in a statement:
“Both individuals as well as the property owners believed the lifelike mannequin was a distasteful Halloween-like hoax left by the former renters.”
Workers at the landfill though thought the body looked like a person and NOT a mannequin, and when one of the cleaners, Israel Lopez, returned to the landfill – the landfill workers contacted authorities.
However the Sheriff of Hernando County Al Nienhuis won’t be pressing charges against the cleaners because he believes it was an honest mistake. Here’s what he said in a news conference:
“I think it’s important to realize that├óΓé¼┬ª most people, they either have seen someone who has very recently passed├óΓé¼┬ª or they see them at a funeral home. Obviously, this body was not anything close to either of those. It was somewhat mummified…[and in a] state of decomposition similar to mummification”
The corpse is believed to have been in the residence for a few weeks at least. Police believe that Jeremy Witfoth, who lived there with his girlfriend before they were evicted, committed suicide. They discovered that fact after finding a suicide note he had left on one of the walls.
Although we agree that the cleaners shouldn’t be charged, we find it a bit ridiculous that the property owner didn’t realize a dead body was in there for a few weeks even if the smell could be attributed to the dead rodents.
They should include ALL of that info to any prospective renter who looks at the house. So they know what kind of place they are moving into!
[Image via Facebook.]