Police in Yonkers say their city was likely only a “dump site” for a body found burned in a shopping cart on Monday, and have turned the investigation over to the NYPD and Bronx district attorney’s office.
The Yonkers Police Department referred Gothamist to the Bronx DA and NYPD, which both said the incident remained under investigation and declined to comment further.
Yonkers police said authorities first got a call just before 2 a.m. on Monday about a fire. But after the Westchester County Department of Public Safety and the Mount Vernon Fire Department extinguished the flames in a supermarket cart on the southern sidewalk of the Oak Street Bridge, they found a lifeless body, police said.
The body appeared to have been set on fire at that location, Yonkers police said. Later on Monday, authorities determined it was a homicide but said the person didn’t appear to have been killed at that location, according to police.
They said in a Facebook post that the Yonkers location appeared to be “merely a ‘dump site’ and the more appropriate primary investigative agency for this homicide is the New York City Police Department.”
Police didn’t release any information about the identity of the person whose body was found in the shopping cart, or about how they believe the person was killed.