Firefighters Discover Woman's Body Among Burning Wooden Pallets
RODEO (CBS SF) -- The body of a dead woman was discovered among the debris left over from a pallet fire that was extinguished Friday morning behind a grocery store in the Rodeo-area of unincorporated Contra Costa County, authorities said.
Rodeo-Hercules Fire District Capt. Jerry Short said firefighters were called around 3:15 a.m. to reports of pallets or debris on fire in the Safeway parking lot on the 600 block of Parker Ave.
Short said firefighters had put out the blaze within five minutes, but one of the firefighters then noticed a woman's burned body amid the debris.
The Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office responded and the coroner's division took the woman's body to confirm her cause of death, according to deputy Jay Gonzales.
He said deputies couldn't immediately identify her because they couldn't get fingerprints from her body.
Short said the fire was near a utility box, but it didn't appear that the fire was electrical in nature.
It's unclear what the woman was doing behind the Safeway, but Short said there are a number of homeless people and homeless camps in that area.