A Michigan man, desperate to get back home with his 92-year-old mother, refused to contact authorities after one of his passengers died. According to police, Ray Tomlinson, 62, of Clinton Township, has not been charged with anything. Authorities are awaiting toxicology results from an autopsy of the 31-year-old woman who died in his car.
Police said the man was returning to Michigan for the summer with his 92-year-old mother and his 31-year-old lover. When officers arrived to the man’s son’s home in Warren, north of Detroit, the man was crying on the curb. The dead woman’s corpse was in the front passenger seat wearing a seatbelt and sunglasses.
“She obviously had been dead for at least 24 hours in screeching heat,” said Warren Police Commissioner Jere Green.
The woman checked herself out of a mental health facility in Phoenix on Sunday. According to Green, the woman, who battled with addiction, may have taken oxycodone.
The trio stopped in Flagstaff and the now deceased woman used a restroom where it is believed that she overdosed.
Green said the driver attempted to wake her but discovered her body was cold. Presuming that she was dead, he searched the web on his cellphone and told police that search results gave him the impression that he had 48 hours to take a corpse to a medical examiner or morgue.
The man continued to drive, answering the woman’s phone for courtesy calls inquiring about her safety by saying, “‘She can’t talk. … She’s dead,’” according to Green.
The caller told the man to contact police, but he was afraid that he would be arrested and his van would be seized.
Police have not release the name of the dead woman.