A Kentucky woman got the shock of her life when a package she expected to contain her medication instead arrived filled with human body parts.
The bizarre mix-up happened on October 29 in Hopkinsville, a town near Nashville. The unidentified woman contacted emergency services immediately after opening one of the two boxes left on her doorstep.
“They delivered two boxes,” she said in a 911 call obtained by NBC affiliate WSMV. “We opened one box and it turned out to be human body parts.”
Inside the box were two human arms and four fingers, packed in ice. According to Christian County Coroner Scott Daniel, who was called to the scene, nothing on the packaging indicated what was inside. The items had been sent through a private courier service, not regular mail.
Daniel told PEOPLE that the disturbing delivery was the result of a courier mix-up.
“It was just an error,” he explained. “I think her box and that box of body parts both came into the Nashville airport. The courier that was supposed to pick up the body parts grabbed her meds, and the other courier picked up her box instead. It was a reversed delivery.”
The coroner confirmed that the human remains were intended for surgical training, not transplantation. “Those parts were never supposed to leave Nashville,” he said.
After contacting the courier and the medical facility that was expecting the shipment, Daniel ensured the body parts were retrieved and sent to the correct location. The woman’s long-awaited medication arrived the next day.
When Daniel visited her home to collect the grisly package, he said she handled the situation surprisingly well.
“We were two days before Halloween — she thought it was a prank or maybe some Halloween decorations delivered to the wrong house,” he said. “She wasn’t shaken up, just very surprised.”
Calling the incident “bizarre,” Daniel noted that its timing made it all the more surreal. “To have fresh arms and fingers show up on a front porch two days before Halloween definitely magnified the weirdness,” he said.
Authorities said the body parts likely came from cadavers donated for medical use, and Daniel advised anyone in a similar situation to immediately call 911 or local police — just as the woman did.
“She did the right thing,” he said.
