Police received a call four hours later from a man reporting his wife missing
Police and firefighters in Sherbrooke, Que., allegedly mistook a woman's body for a mannequin and threw her remains into a dumpster, police Chief Danny McConnell said Thursday.
Firefighters were called to a brush fire behind a factory just after 10 a.m. on July 23 after witnesses allegedly said they thought a silicone mannequin had been set on fire, McConnell said.
Police were called to the scene about 10 minutes later and they spoke to witnesses, he added. After consulting with firefighters, police decided that what they thought was a mannequin would be taken to a dumpster behind the police station, which isn't accessible to the public.
McConnell said police received a call four hours later from a man reporting his wife missing, adding that they used a signal from the missing woman's cellphone to find her car, which was parked near the factory where the blaze had occurred.
He said investigators around 6:30 p.m. that evening decided to look into the dumpster for clues and discovered human remains.