Authorities are investigating the discovery of a human heart in a salt pile at a Tennessee Department of Transportation facility. Workers at the facility in McEwen were making preparations for inclement weather Thursday when they came across something unusual that was later confirmed to be a human heart, Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis says. Officers were searching other salt piles at the facility Friday, per the AP. The organ was transported to the state medical examiner's office in Nashville, where testing of tissue samples confirmed that it was an adult male human heart, Davis says.
"At first they thought it was a rock," Davis tells WKRN of the worker who stumbled upon the heart. He notes that it appears the heart had been in the pile in the salt barn for some time, per WTVF. "Salt has a drying effect like it would on a country ham ... it's very similar to the body," Davis says. "I hate to use that as a reference, but imagine that this is what it is." He adds: "I've got 32 years ... in law enforcement, and I do have to say this is probably one of the top five of the most bizarre things that I've ever seen."
Davis tells WKRN that the facility is being treated as a crime scene. In the meantime, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says in a statement it's doing further DNA testing on the heart "to try to determine its origin." Davis encourages anyone who thinks they might have information about what might have happened to reach out to the TBI or the sheriff’s office. "Everybody's somebody's somebody, and at the end of the day it would bother me if I laid down my head at night not knowing that we'd done everything we can for this person and this person's family," Davis tells the AP. (More heart stories.)
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