A Florida man found human skeletal remains stuffed in a garbage bag while picking up trash along the road on Thursday.
John Jarvis, who is retired from the Navy, was picking up trash near International Speedway Boulevard in Volusia County when he came across a plastic garbage bag in the woods by the side of the road. Jarvis picked it up and saw something tumble out. It turned out to be a human skull, WFTV reported.
"[The bag] was tearing and you could see just the top of the skull," Jarvis told WFTV. "I couldn't tell it was a skull. So that's when I touched it to see what it was, and it kind of rolled down from the bundle. That's when I realized it was a skull."
Jarvis alerted Volusia County police about what he found. The area is being treated as a crime scene as police investigate.
"Anytime anyone ends up anywhere in a bag, it's suspicious," Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson told WESH-TV.
Johnson told the station the trash bag with the skull had likely been there a long time, due to the amount of vegetation growing into the bag. Trees in the area were recently trimmed, which led to the bag being exposed.
A medical examiner will determine if the bag contained any other body parts.
"What we'll start doing is looking for reports of any missing people. What evidence we can collect out of it. We don't know what all that is yet. This is very early in the investigation," Johnson told WESH-TV.
Police said it is too early to determine if the skull is connected to the case of missing person Yessenia Suarez, who was last seen in October at her job in Lake Mary, the New York Daily News reported.
Police suspect her husband, Luis Toledo, killed his wife and her two children last year. Toledo has allegedly admitted to police he killed his wife with a blow to the throat, the Daily News reported. However his wife and children's bodies have not been found.
