Woman's Decomposing Body Found in Garbage: Police

The decomposing body of a woman has been found in the garbage in Chicago, according to police.

Chicago firefighters said they were alerted to a report of a body found among garbage in Chicago's South Side on Monday night.

When firefighters arrived at 107th Street and Edbrooke Avenue they found a body and identified it as being a man who was in his 40s when he died, Fox32 reported.

But the Chicago Police Department (CPD) later told the network that the body was in fact that of a woman.

She had been found in a partly decomposed state, according to the network. It was unclear how long she had been left among the garbage.

Police are now treating the woman's death as a homicide and have launched an investigation to learn how she died.

In 2021, there were 797 homicides in Chicago, which was 25 more than in the year before, according to NBC5 Chicago. It was also the highest number of homicides since 1996.

Newsweek has contacted the CPD for comment.

There have been numerous occasions where human remains have been unwittingly found some time after the person died.

Earlier this month a decomposing body was found inside a vehicle at a car wash in Kentucky.

Lexington police officers were alerted to a foul odor coming from a vehicle at the Red Mile Car Wash at about 2 p.m. on August 1.

Police said they did not find anything suspicious or unusual at the scene and they have since opened an investigation into the death.

Meanwhile, the remains of several people have been found in Lake Mead amid dropping water levels there.

The National Park Service (NPS) said it was alerted to a body being found on the Swim Beach in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on July 25.

An NPS spokesperson said in a statement: "Park rangers are on scene and have set a perimeter to recover the remains. The Clark County Medical Examiner has been contacted to determine the cause of death. The investigation is ongoing."

Lake Mead, which is the largest reservoir in the U.S., has seen significant drops in its water levels due to an ongoing drought that has blighted western states.

But an unexpected result of the falling water levels has been that four bodies have been found in what had been once-submerged ground.

If the lake's water levels continue to drop, experts believe the shoreline could recede by some 20 to 30 feet by September 2023.