Next time you walk past a Halloween display with a body in it, make sure you check to see that it isn’t the real thing!
Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed laid decomposing on his third-floor balcony as neighbors claim they saw the lifeless but did nothing because they thought his body was a Halloween display. According to the Los Angeles Times, the body remained on the balcony for four days before police were notified.
Austin Raishbrook, director and owner of RMG News, quickly appeared on the scene after hearing about it on the radio, telling the Times in matter-of-fact fashion that “The body...did look unreal, to be honest.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are treating the death as an apparent suicide, believing that the gunshot was self-inflicted. According to the Times, they have declined further comment.
Last month, another dead body (unrelated) was unintentionally left to rot at Australian Royal North Shore Hospital.
A dead--and already decomposing--body was found after hospital staff complained about a foul smell. The body had been moved to a viewing room at the mortuary within the hospital and was left there for four days before being discovered.
A representative for the hospital made a statement saying ”while the hospital has documented processes for the viewing of deceased persons, in this instance it was individual human error that caused the body to remain, inappropriately, in the viewing area. “
The hospital insists that if staff had followed the correct procedures, the incident would not have happened.
Counseling was provided to the worker involved as well a reinforcement of policies, the hospital said. In the spirit of bad timing, the incident followed media reports questioning the security at the hospital’s morgue.
Our Take
Prior to discovering that the “Halloween prop” was in fact a real dead body, this story reminds me so much of Weekend at Bernie’s. Remember that movie? It’s the one where the two guys are toting around Bernie, their dead boss’ body trying to convince everyone around them that he’s alive while they live it up at his beach house. For a majority of the movie, they have everyone fooled that Bernie is alive.
