Wednesday about 4 pm, Trout, Little Man and I left the house to take Trout to ballet, and for both of them to attend the sibling class at the hospital after ballet. Trout had taken the sib class before Sunny was born, but Little Man wasn't old enough then. With the issues he's been having about being worried that we won't love him anymore after the baby comes (which we are addressing), I figured the class might help him some, and Trout went along so he wouldn't feel too uncomfortable (he can get shy in new situations).
So, we're driving down our street, and we get maybe 1/2 mile, maybe, down the street when we are stopped in our tracks by the presence of about 5 police cars, all on our side of the road, parked in a semi circle with the yellow tape run between them. There were about 10 officers walking around carefully, some talking on cell phones, some just looking around. They were surrounding two cars parked on the side of the road that have been there for ages - months. The cars weren't crashed, there were no new cars there, just those two, and the police skulking around looking....odd. Unfortunately nobody was directing traffic, so it took us a good 10 minutes to get around the incident, as the middle school a block away had just let out for their post-school activities and there was a lot of traffic. A little further down I saw a bunch of landscaping equipment, including one of those big, expensive mowers, scattered about AND COMPLETELY UNATTENDED. Totally. Super weird, which I know because BDF used to be a landscaper in his former life before kids.
We went on our way, went to ballet, went to the sib class (which the kids loved and during which I learned that Trout can swaddle a baby - I didn't know she knew how to do that, and she's gooooood at it - and that the hospital is building a new mother/baby unit that won't be ready til next summer - and that Little Man knows how to hold a baby properly and is really quite excited to be getting a little brother), and came home, about 7:30 pm. The police cars were still there, though there weren't nearly so many cops lurking around. They had moved the cars over a bit so traffic could get by. I figured they had found a body.
Once again, I hate it when I'm right.
My neighbor has kids in the middle school, and had driven by the mess the day before, so she called the police and said hey, we parents have a right to know as soon as possible what was going on there yesterday and if we need to be concerned about our kids' safety, as the walking route for kids to come from the middle school to our townhouse development goes right by that area. They told her the landscapers had found a body in one of the cars and it was under investigation. She asked about when they would know what the cause of death was, because if it was foul play a lot of parents won't be letting their kids walk through there anymore. They told her right now it didn't look like foul play, but that they would let her know.
So we wait. The thing that gets me, though, is that the car they found the body in had been parked there for at least 2 months and never moved. If a body had been there for 2 months, someone would have smelled it and found it before now. So how did the body get there? My neighbor's guess is that someone crawled in there and either died or committed suicide. There are a handful of homeless people, who apparently want to stay that way despite our neighborhood's efforts to help them, who live down by the railroad tracks, which are about 50 feet or so from where the car was parked. Maybe one of them crawled in the car to try and get warm or something (it's been on the colder side at night here lately) and then died.
Stay tuned for further details as they arrive.
Woah. Bodies in cars?
Posted by: Jessie | October 07, 2006 at 07:18 PM
I didn't know there were homeless people living by the railroad tracks!?
Posted by: Uncle Orca? | October 08, 2006 at 05:18 PM