Dead body found in crate on train in West Humboldt Park industrial warehouse
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Chicago Police on Friday night were trying to figure out how a man's dead body wound up inside a crate at a West Humboldt Park neighborhood warehouse.
As CBS 2's Jermont Terry reported, the warehouse is located in an industrial park on Ohio Street near Kilbourn Avenue. Trains pull into the West Side industrial park often, and the crate with the body inside showed up on a train car.
The warehouse manager called 911 at 11:07 a.m., when workers found the corpse in a crate used for railroad steel.
The gruesome discovery was outlined in police radio dispatches.
"She said it's supposed to be in a box that came in from Mexico," an officer told dispatch.
"All responding units just be careful - be careful around the potential crime scene so we can figure out what's going on," the dispatcher responded.
By the time Chicago Police arrived, even officers were not sure what they were dealing with in the West Side warehouse.
"We requested (the Fire Department) to the location. They're trying to ask us if the body is in pieces or intact?" the dispatcher said.
"Let me take a look real quick. It's inside of a train car, so I'm trying to climb up right now," the officer is heard telling the dispatcher. "I cannot tell if the deceased remains are completely intact, because it appears to be possibly intact. I can see a torso and a head, but it looks like the remains are jammed between some type of metal copper wires."
Chicago Police determined the body was that of a man between the ages of 35 and 40 – yet so many questions remain.
It is not clear where the man died, how he died, or how his corpse ended up in a steel on a crate on a train that ended up in an industrial warehouse on the West Side of Chicago.
The investigation will take time to sort out, and will first require a positive identification on the man.
Area Four detectives are investigating.