Clerk threw body he mistook for mannequin in bin

A front desk clerk at a Florida apartment complex has been fired after mistaking the body of a tenant for a mannequin and throwing it in a rubbish bin.

The Tampa Tribune reported that Ronald Benjamin, 61, told police he saw the body in the car park of the 16-storey St Petersburg apartment building and assumed someone had put a mannequin there as an April Fool’s Day prank.

A co-worker arrived and told him there was a body in the car park, but he insisted it was a mannequin. He got a newspaper carrier and her son to help him throw the body in the rubbish.

A maintenance worker saw the body and called authorities. Police said the body was that of a 96-year-old woman who jumped from her balcony.

Police said Nancy Yates fell from the balcony of her 16th floor apartment. Authorities found a suicide note.

“He is no longer with us,” said Sheryl Case, the office manager at Peterborough apartments.

Co-worker Mark Hill told the Tribune that Benjamin thought someone at a nearby bar had played a trick on him.

Benjamin had worked at the building for nine years. The building is subsidised and reserved for people 62 and older.

Jimmy Wright, a front desk clerk who works on the weekend shifts, told the Tribune that there’s a system in place for employees to check on residents if they fail on a particular day to dial into a special monitoring system.

“She hasn’t been coming down for the last few weeks,” Wright said.

“She didn’t come down to mingle with the residents.”