Body of Woman Who Committed Suicide Mistaken For April Fools' Day Prank
The body of a 96-year-old Florida woman who apparently killed herself was placed in a Dumpster outside her housing complex by a receptionist who mistook the dead woman for a mannequin, police said.
The woman's body was first found Wednesday morning in the south parking lot of the Peterborough Apartments in St. Petersberg by a front desk clerk who was taking a smoke break, police said.
The clerk believed the woman's body was just a mannequin used as an April Fools' Day prank, police said, and returned to his desk duties.
When another employee reported the body to him two hours later, police said the clerk - still believing it was a prank - enlisted help from a couple of newspaper carriers to help him place the woman's body, which he believed was a mannequin, in the garbage.
Later that morning, an apartment maintenance saw the body in the Dumpster - and realizing it was a human victim - called police.
An investigation revealed the woman had suffered from depression and left behind a suicide note in her apartment before she used a step stool to climb jump out the window of her 16th floor apartment, police said.
No criminal charges are expected to be filed.