RCMP: Please, no more rotting-corpse deliveries
By Kyra Hoggan
Local police became the gurus of gross last weekend, after a local couple deposited a rotting corpse in the lobby of the Castlegar RCMP detachment.
Castlegar RCMP Cpl. Debbie Postnikoff said a couple came in at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday, after stumbling across a corpse in rural Castlegar. Believing the remains to be human, the duo laid the mess on a sheet of plastic and brought it to the cops.
The corpse was so badly decomposed, Postnikoff said, that police had to wait until the following day for the Coroner’s Service to confirm it was merely the remains of a juvenile bear.
In the interim, though, RCMP had to deal with some supreme “yuck” factor.
“It was infested with cockroaches and maggots, which ended up in our lobby, too,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years of service … and I hope I never do again. “The stench was so powerful, we had to wear masks in the detachment for several hours.” As the ranking officer on duty, Postnikoff herself got to help wrestle the nasty bundle into the detachment garage. “Handling (the corpse) was so awful,” she said, adding she was at a loss to truly describe the experience. “I was speechless. Beyond words.” She did allow, however, that the couple seemed sincere in their desire to help – but added the methods they employed were misguided. First off, had the remains actually been human, the couple would have utterly destroyed a crime scene. Secondly, they may well have exposed themselves to myriad unknown health risks, such as bacteria and viruses. Finally, the detachment lobby is hardly the ideal place to deal with a decomposing body, be it human, bear or otherwise. She instead recommends informing police about the body’s location and allowing officers to investigate the remains in situ. As for what they ultimately did with the corpse? They wouldn’t tell The Source, preferring instead to ensure it’s far from local residents and thus unlikely to be returned to them any time in the near future.
