It’s the kind of story that would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Maybe funny in a Coen Brothers kind of way. For 15 days, a man’s dead body was in the backseat of his own car, a car that was towed to different times within that span before anyone noticed.
According to Prince William County police in Woodbridge, Virginia, as reported by KGW8, the chain of oversights started on November 3. A private towing company was called to remove what seemed like an abandoned vehicle from the PS Business Park on PS Business Center Drive in Woodbridge.
The car was hauled off, logged, stored, and eventually transferred to a second lot in Fairfax County. At no point did anyone think to peek through the windows to scope things out, to give it a look over for anything odd or suspicious, like, say, the body of a dead adult male in the back seat.
Car Was Towed Twice in 15 Days—and Nobody Noticed the Dead Body in the Backseat
Two weeks later, workers at the Fairfax lot finally spotted something just the tiniest bit weird: the body of a 49-year-old man on the floor of the backseat. Police later confirmed he’d been reported missing on November 1, two days before the car’s first tow. He had been in the car, plainly visible to the naked eye if you bothered to look, from the moment the vehicle was hooked up to the first tow truck.
Investigators are now working to confirm his identity and determine the cause of the incident. The medical examiner will handle the official cause and manner of death. Police say there are no early signs of foul play. They say they will keep the man’s identity private as the investigation continues.
Police say they’re still piecing together the full story of the man’s final days and how multiple workers across multiple companies didn’t notice his dead body in the back seat of a car that several people had interacted with over the span of two weeks.
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