Police in Philadelphia make a gruesome discovery inside a casket that was abandoned on the sidewalk, according to media reports.
People who were walking in North Philadelphia discovered the infant casket at around 9 p.m., and it apparently contained human remains.
“I was pretty shocked,” witness Chris James told CBS Philadelphia. “It looked like something straight out of ‘Thriller.’”
They then contacted police, he said.
“We didn’t want to open it,” James added. “We didn’t know what was inside. We didn’t know if toxic waste could be in there, anything, we honestly thought it could be an animal.”
In describing what he saw to Philly.com, he saw a “small casket wrapped in a trash bag.” When police opened it, they found “something organic” inside.
“According to the medical examiner, [they] were in fact human organs. They believed they belonged to an infant or a child,” Chief Inspector Scott Small told CBS Philly. “What’s unusual is inside the coffin, other than the bag of organs, there was no body.”
The chief inspector described the casket as “fresh” and said it had recently been pried open.
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Investigators will now search a nearby cemetery to determine if any graves were disturbed, and even nearby funeral homes to see if it had been stolen.
“There have been cases where people take remains or human bodies for whatever unusual reasons they decide, but we’re going to look into that,” Small added to CBS.
