Man's body found in trash can in Little Italy neighborhood

Garbage scavenger came across corpse Monday morning

08/24/2011 10:00 PM

The body of a dead man was found in a garbage can behind this property on the 1400 block of West Flournoy Street on Monday, August 22.
J. GEIL/Photo Editor

A dead man’s body was found in a garbage can in Little Italy on Monday morning, according to the Chicago Police Department.

The body was found by a scavenger rummaging through garbage cans in the alley behind the 1400 block of West Flournoy Street around 9:30 a.m., police said.

A representative from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said the clothed body was a white male. They did not have information on approximate age.

The body was not decomposed, the examiner’s office said, so the death was relatively recent. A cause of death had not been determined as of Tuesday afternoon, pending toxicology reports among other things, the examiner’s office said.

Police said Area 4 detectives are calling it a basic death investigation at this point, rather than a homicide investigation, because they didn’t have an official cause of death yet.

“Before detectives can reclassify it as a homicide investigation, they would need to get a ruling from the Medical Examiner’s Office,” police News Affairs Officer Darryl Baety said.

Several neighbors who live on the relatively quiet block said they didn’t hear anything, but said finding out about the mysterious body was unnerving.

Joanne LaCassa said she’s lived in Little Italy all her life. She’s seen people come and go, and as the University of Illinois at Chicago crept up on her, some of the neighborhood feel of Flournoy was lost.

But in her 24 years in her current home, she’d never seen anything like this — and it scared her.

“When I heard about it my hair stood up. It gave me the chills,” LaCassa said Monday afternoon. “We care, we’ve been here all our lives. We don’t want anything like that here in our alley.”

LaCassa’s neighbor a few doors down, a retiree in whose garbage can the body was found, said she hadn’t taken anything out to the trash in a week. Clearly rattled by the experience, she called the discovery of the corpse “a shocker,” but asked that her name not be printed.

Joab Salvador just moved into his new apartment in the 1400 block of Lexington Street, on the other side of the alley from where the body was found. A 20-year-old transfer student to UIC, he just moved to the neighborhood last week and was more than a little perturbed.

“I was terrified, to be honest,” Salvador said Monday. “I put it on my Facebook, and my parents called me all freaked out. Seeing things like this, it’s pretty scary.”

Commander Dennis Keane of the Chicago Police Department’s 12th District, when asked about the case at an unrelated event, said everybody’s waiting on the autopsy report at this point. But it’s a safe neighborhood, he said.

“It still remains a quiet block,” Keane said.

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By babygirl
Posted: 04/04/2012 11:30 PM

not for nothing but whomever was with the deceassed at time and refused to call 911 and leave him in the garage til dead may God forgive you and allow you repentance. You are forgiven once you truly repent. May God Help you to come clean and prove your imperfection.

By babygirl
Posted: 10/28/2011 0:06 AM

So ask Oscar and Roxy

By JG from FOREST PARK
Posted: 08/31/2011 10:26 AM

Even the police know this was a homicide . A few RESIDENTS on that block know Who, how and why . It WAS a former Chicago Fireman, and this was not on the local news ...... Why?

By monika from Loomis
Posted: 08/29/2011 7:06 PM

Any new updates? This is very eery... I also wonder why this was not on a UIC crime alert report?

By jackie from taylor st
Posted: 08/29/2011 1:55 PM

any news yet on the identity of th man . this is scary want 2 move back where i grew up left 15yrs ago b cause of how bad it was now all im hearing is bad things again just when im getting read 2 come back

By Linda Pantano from Little Italy
Posted: 08/26/2011 8:55 PM

I have heard that it's one of the guys that used to live in the neighborhood.

By Old Timer from 14th and Michigan
Posted: 08/26/2011 7:05 PM

Well there have been many killers from Taylor St. but they used to dump the bodies in places like Stickney, not in the neighborhood.

By Jana from Lexington
Posted: 08/26/2011 6:07 PM

Thanks for the update on this story. My daughter is a UIC student who just moved onto Lexington also, so we are a little concerned about this also. Will keep checking for another update!

By Ben Meyerson from Chicago Journal
Posted: 08/26/2011 5:11 PM

Jackie, they haven't identified the person yet. They'll probably do that once they're done a thorough examination and determined a cause of death. I'll update when I find more out.

By jackie from taylors st
Posted: 08/26/2011 5:04 PM

is there any info on the person found any identification? when will that b available