Law enforcement officials in Illinois have identified and are actively searching for a man believed to have hijacked a hearse that had a corpse inside of it.
Deon Howard, 23, is accused of stealing a Rockford funeral home’s vehicle with a body inside and driving it nearly 100 miles to the South Side of Chicago before dumping the body nearby, CBS 2 Chicago reported.
Rockford police identify suspect in theft of funeral home van with corpse inside https://t.co/VWIP0aCQxO pic.twitter.com/M1JfxfwChF
— CBS Chicago (@cbschicago) January 26, 2023
Howard is charged with both unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle and abuse of a corpse, according to 23 WIFR.
The funeral home van was found Sunday near the 1400 block of the Chicago Calumet Heights neighborhood, but no body was discovered inside, CBS 2 reported. The corpse was recovered a couple of miles away by police following a report of a body in an alley on Monday. The man, identified as 47-year-old Curtis Brown, had passed away last Thursday due to natural causes at a local hospital. (RELATED: Family Defends Decision To Display Corpse In Nightclub)
#UPDATE: A body missing and then later recovered following a stolen funeral van incident has been identified as 47-year-old Curtis Brown.
More: https://t.co/bR0ZGmOpC5 pic.twitter.com/CafIe47zI0
— WGN TV News (@WGNNews) January 24, 2023
The outlet reported that Brown’s body was not covered up at all but rather it was “dumped” and lying out in the open. Once police obtained and identified the remains, the body was returned to a funeral home and Brown’s family was notified. (RELATED: ‘Necrobots’: Scientists Convert Spider’s Corpse Into A Machine)
The suspect remains at large.
