SACRAMENTO — It sounds like a story fit for Halloween.
“There was a transient female walking down the 2900 block of Connie Drive. She actually had a skull in her possession,” Sacramento police Sgt. Bryce Heinlein said.
That was an actual call to police on Wednesday that is now a death investigation.
“A call like this is not something that happens every day. We hope we can get down to the bottom of what caused this person to become deceased,” Heinlein said.
Officers confronted the woman at an abandoned house on Connie Drive where their investigation began.
“She brought the officers to the area where she located the skull,” Heinlein said.
The body was a couple of blocks down to Crosby Way at an abandoned homeless encampment.
Detectives, officers and crime scene technicians spent several hours between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday combing the area for clues.
“When officers got out there, they located a decomposed body,” Heinlein added.
Philip, a neighbor, lives in a house next to the encampment where he says the homeless woman he called “Victoria” has lived for years. He pointed to the exact location where the body was discovered, a few feet from her stuff.
“Right there. Right past those bushes you see… To the right, right back there,” Philip said.
Warren’s house is also next to the encampment. He smelled something foul, thinking it was a dead cat.
“I went to walk back there and thought, Damn! What the hell is that smell? It make me sick to my stomach, so I turned my ass around and came back here,” he said.
“Twenty cop cars out here. And the cops got her out there. And they’re taking pictures of her holding a head. Then they get her hands and CSI showing up,” Philip said.
The coroner will determine the sex, ID and cause of death.
