A gravedigger in West Virginia dug up the corpse of a baby buried more than 40 years ago — then tossed the casket down a hill, which sent the skeletal body flying through the air as the lid opened, according to local authorities.
Matthew Fortner, 49, was digging a plot for a new grave at Baylous Cemetery in Salt Rock, WV, on Mar. 27, when he allegedly unearthed the casket, which was buried in 1982, according to the Cabell County Sheriff’s Office, WOWKTV reported.
The heartless ghoul then dumped the casket over a hillside — the baby’s corpse thrown from the coffin as it rolled down grass, cops said, according to the report.
A couple, decorating gravestones in anticipation of Easter, witnessed the horrifying defilement and called the sheriff’s office, the report said.
“It takes a sick individual, in my opinion, to desecrate a grave and mess with a corpse — period,” Cabell County Sheriff Doug Adams told WSAZ.
Fortner was arrested in connection to the incident on Wednesday.
He is charged with disinterment or displacement of a dead body or part thereof, damage to cemetery or graveyard, and violating protection of human skeletal remains, the outlet reported.
He is being held on $105,000 bond and faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Officials said that the grave of the young child — just months-old according to WSAZ — was the only burial plot they found to be disturbed. The name of the child was not released.
“We do think this is an isolated incident. We don’t think is going to be a trend or anything,” Sheriff Adams told WSAZ.
Previously, Fortner was convicted of murder in 1997 and sentenced to life with mercy in prison in 1999 and released in 2008, according to WSAZ.
The child’s corpse was taken to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Charleston, according to that report.
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