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Odor leads police to man's body in abandoned vehicle
A passer-by notices an odor and flies and alerts an officer nearby. Police say the manmay have been dead for days.
By KEVIN GRAHAM
Published July 10, 2006
TAMPA - Police found a body wrapped in blankets and hidden in the back seat of an abandoned car Sunday, at a busy shopping center near Sulphur Springs. Lt. Chuck Stanbro said the body appeared to have been there for days. Detectives could tell only that it was a white male. The cause and the time of death would have to wait on a report from the medical examiner. A customer of the Shell gas station at N Florida and E Waters avenues noticed an odor coming from the car and saw flies. A police officer was sitting in his car nearby, filling out a report, when the passer-by asked him to check it out. Stanbro said detectives think the man may have been dead for at least three days. Witnesses told police that they remember seeing the car there as far back as Monday or Tuesday of last week. It sat near Florida Avenue in the parking lot of Kmart. "It very much looked like somebody was trying to hide the body in the car," Stanbro said. Detectives found personal belongings and clothes in the car. Stanbro said the man could have been homeless or in the process of moving. Police were treating it as a homicide, Stanbro said. The car is a faded, tan, four-door Oldsmobile with a Florida license plate. Detectives ask anyone with information about the car to call Tampa police at (813) 931-6588.
[Last modified July 10, 2006, 06:17:28]
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