Morgue Director Stored 157 Corpses In Refrigerated Truck, Fired After Complaints

The director of a state morgue was fired by governor of the western Mexican state of Jalisco after a refrigerated semitrailer truck, which was carrying 157 unidentified bodies, drew complaints from the residents nearby over the smell, reports said Tuesday.

The vehicle was left in an open field close to the city of Tlajomulco de Zuniga.

Jalisco Gov. Aristoteles Sandoval said the director was fired for his "indolence and negligence."

"It is evident that those who were in charge of the transfer procedure altered the protocol without notifying their hierarchical superiors," he said.

The former director, Luis Octavio Cotero, said Tuesday he had warned prosecutors two years ago about the state's overflowing morgue, which couldn’t handle the high number of bodies that piled up due to Mexico’s rising number of homicides.

He also denied giving orders to move the truck out of the morgue’s parking lot, CTV News reported.

The truck will be moved back to the morgue, Roberto Lopez, the Jalisco state general secretary said adding, "This is a demonstration of insensitivity on the part of some public servants."

The truck was discovered after locals living nearby started complaining about the smell since the vehicle’s cooling system broke.

“This affects our kids, it smells horrible and the longer it stays it’s going to stink even worse,” Patricia Jimenez, who lived near the field where the truck was parked, said.

The bodies were believed to be of victims of organized crime and cartel violence in the country. Though refrigeration can slow down the decomposition of the bodies, many of the corpses were already rotted as they were recovered from undisclosed graves in the state.

As the morgues at the state’s Institute of Forensic Sciences were full, they had to keep the bodies elsewhere until a proper disposal was found. They were at first transferred to a site for a mass grave, but the project was suspended when the locals protested the area was too close to residential houses. Finally, the truck ended up in a field behind a housing development where it was found.

“This was a mistake ... and it is bothering the neighbors' as well as causing pain for victims' families,” Javier Perlasca, an inspector for the state human rights commission, said. “It is time to end these comings and goings that only outrage and hurt people.”

He added the bodies should be given a proper burial.

There has been an unprecedented increase in the number of bodies that pile up due to violence in the state. There were 16,339 homicides across Mexico in the first seven months of this year — a 17 percent increase from the same period in 2017, a report in Fox News said.

Work was underway to build a new facility in Jalisco that would hold 700 bodies in its first phase, Lopez said, according to a Reuters report. “When it is built, these bodies will be transferred.”

He added the facility will be built in a month and a half.