Body of a man is found on conveyor belt of Texas recycling center - the second corpse found in a plant in the county this year and the fourth since 2014
A man’s body has been found on the conveyor belt of a Texas recycling center in a rural area just south of Austin, according to authorities.
According to investigators, workers at the plant were in the process of sorting items on the conveyor belt when the corpse was discovered early on Thursday morning.
This was the second time this year that a dead body was found in an Austin-area recycling facility.
And two more bodies have turned up at the same plant since 2014.
In each case the bodies ended up at the plants after being left in recycling bins and then getting transported there by collection trucks.
Investigators are now trying to determine which truck the latest body was transported in before it was left at the recycling center, the Austin American-Statesman reported.
Travis County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the Texas Disposal Systems recycling facility in Creedmoor at around 9:45am on Thursday.
The image above shows large piles of waste waiting to be sorted at the Texas Disposal Systems recycling plant in Creedmoor, Texas, just south of Austin, in March 2016. The body of a man was discovered on a conveyor belt at the plant on Thursday, according to authorities
Sheriff’s deputies are treating the case as a suspicious death until an autopsy proves otherwise. Medical examiners are scheduled to conduct the autopsy on Friday.
‘The autopsy will help us determine if foul play was involved,’ Travis County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Kristen Dark told KXAN-TV.
‘Right now, what we know is we have a male victim, our crime lab is here, our detectives are here and the investigation has just gotten underway.’
In March, workers at the Balcones Resources recycling center in eastern Travis County found the body of 31-year-old Collen LeBlanc on a conveyor belt.
Investigators have said that no foul play was suspended in LeBlanc’s death.
In April 2015, workers at the Texas Disposal Systems plant in Creedmoor discovered the body of 49-year-old Clarence Gerald Gardner Jr.
This is the second time this year that a body was found in a recycling plant in Travis County. It is also the third time in the last six years that a corpse was discovered at the Creedmoor plant (seen in the above file photo)
His body was found on a conveyor belt by employees who were separating cardboard from other items.
A homeless man, 56-year-old Mark Kenady, pleaded guilty to killing Gardner, who was also homeless, with a brick.
Kenady was sentenced to 45 years in state prison. He told investigators that he hit Gardner over the head with a brick after a fight erupted between them and a homeless woman in South Austin.
Kenady told authorities that after loading Gardner’s body into a recycling bin, he stabbed him twice.
In January 2014, the body of a mother-of-four was found at the Creedmoor recycling plant.
No arrests were made in connection to the death of Shaybren Harris, though authorities suspect that the person who killed her knew her.