Unmarked Heads Found in Southwest Airlines Cargo
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In what sounds like the setup for a horror movie, in Little Rock, Arkansas a Southwest Airlines Employee found 40-to 60 heads — or parts of human heads — in an unlabeled biohazard container. The container was bound for Dallas Love Field.Various reports indicate that last week an airline employee found a biohazard container that wasn’t clearly labeled. From The Smoking Gun:
Southwest employee Randy Stroud, 51, advised Woods [the deliveryman] that Federal Aviation Administration and
Transportation Security Administration regulations covering biohazard material required him to “see what was in the containers.” Upon inspection of the first container, Stroud discovered “a large red Bio Hazard bag…with several items wrapped in large absorbent pads.” When Stroud realized the items were human heads, he called airport police.”
After local police were called in, the remains were whisked away to the Pulaski County Coroner’s office.
The reason for the coroner’s concern: there is a brisk black market in body parts, and they wanted to ensure that these particular parts were legit. According to a WFAA story by Jason Whitely, Pulaski County Coroner Garland Camper said, “We’ve got issues of human body parts that are being transported throughout the country but via here in Arkansas.”
The Dallas NBC affiliate reported that the heads were being shipped from JLS Consulting of Wynne, Ark. to the Fort Worth branch of the medical research company Medtronic. They were destined to become training materials for physicians.
Several reports indicate that this sort of shipping of body parts isn’t unusual, and the biggest issue here is that the forms were not properly filled out.
While current coverage indicates that no crime has been committed—and that this is likely just a case of underdone paperwork—it’s a story that people care about right now. A Google search turned up over 2,000 entries on this topic just hours after this story broke!
You can read more about the black market for human body parts here.
