Dead Guy Found Inside SUV Piled High With Parking Tickets
When a woman noticed a pile of parking tickets on a parked Isuzu Axiom in south Florida, she approached it for a closer look and was shocked to see a man slumped over in the driver's seat.
"Oh my god, please tell me this man is not dead," the woman, Carolyn White, thought to herself, according to the Sun Sentinel. The body was Jacob Morpeau, who was 62, from Miami. He was "sitting in the driver's seat, and his upper body lay face down over the SUV's center console. His hand held a credit card."
The pile of citations on the Axiom were issued from Nov. 12 to Nov. 15—four days of parking officers walking by Morpeau's body in the car and not seeing him.
The medical examiner's office said that he had died from natural causes and that he had hypertensive cardiovascular disease, but it's unclear how long the body had been in the SUV, as the date of death could not be determined.
White said, "I can understand why the meter person probably didn't see him from the driver's side," but she could see him on the passenger's side, even through the Axiom's tinted windows.
The timeline of parking tickets are as follows:
Citations were issued to the Isuzu at 7:39 a.m. Saturday, Nov., 12, and again at 9:30 p.m. There weren't any tickets issued on Sunday.
On Monday the 14th, a parking officer wrote a ticket at 7:03 a.m. Then on Nov. 15th, the Isuzu was written up at 6:39 a.m. for one meter, and again at 6:42 a.m. at the meter just next to the spot the SUV was parked in.
White came along around 12:25 p.m..
Morpeau's son said that his father had last talked to friends at around 8 p.m. on Nov. 11. The family hadn't heard from him for a few days before the body was found, says a Fort Lauderdale police report.
White wonders why a parking officer didn't take notice of the dead man in the car.
Fort Lauderdale officials didn't comment on the situation, reports the Sun Sentinel, but the $160 in parking fees were dismissed "due to extenuating circumstances."
You don't say.
(h/t to Creative Accidents!)