ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A front desk clerk at an apartment complex was fired this week after mistaking the body of a tenant for a mannequin and throwing it in a trash bin.
Police said Nancy Yates, 96, hoisted herself over a balcony of her 16th floor apartment. She fell onto the parking lot. Officials found a suicide note.
Ronald Benjamin, 61, told police he saw the body in the parking lot of the St. Petersburg apartment building when he walked outside to smoke a cigarette early Wednesday and assumed someone put a mannequin there as part of an April Fools’ Day prank, the Tampa Tribune reported.
‘‘He is no longer with us,’’ said the office manager at Peterborough apartments.
When his co-worker arrived around 6 a.m., she told Benjamin she saw a body in the parking lot. But he maintained it was a mannequin. Later he asked a newspaper carrier and her son to help him put the mannequin in the trash.
A maintenance worker saw the body in the bin around 8 a.m., and police were called.