273 corpses found on wandering truck

MEXICO CITY (AP):

A wandering refrigerated truck carrying corpses from an overflowing morgue in Mexico actually contained 273 bodies, not 157 as originally stated.

Officials described late Wednesday how the truck was forced to move around the outskirts of the western city of Guadalajara as neighbours and officials objected to its grisly cargo and the smell.

A total of 444 bodies had piled up at the state morgue as Mexico suffered a 17 per cent surge in homicides so far this year. Forty-nine of those bodies remained in the morgue, 273 were crammed on to the truck, and 122 were kept in a second refrigerated trailer in the morgue parking lot.

Dante Haro Reyes, the human, rights prosecutor of Jalisco state, said the truck was not meant to be wandering around as it was originally meant to take the unclaimed bodies to a refrigerated warehouse.

But that fairly short trip quickly grew complicated when several issues arose.