LENNOX : Man Finds Human Skull, Bites It to Test Authenticity

A Lennox man who found a human skull in a garbage can in front of his home said that at first he did not know if the skull was real.

So he bit it.

“I bit it on the neck to make sure it was real,” said Jose Chavez, 24, a landscaping worker. “That’s how you test things, to see if they’re real. . . . Then I put it back (in the garbage can) and I went in and called the police. . . . It was a shocking thing.”

Sheriff’s Department homicide investigators determined that the skull is that of a human, but they do not know how old it is or how it wound up in the plastic garbage can at an apartment building in the 10800 block of South Mansel Avenue.

It apparently was placed there sometime between Wednesday night and about 7:45 Thursday morning, when Chavez found it while taking out his trash.

“It could be a year old, it could be 20 years old,” Deputy George Ducoulombier said. Ducoulombier said the skull--which had no flesh--appeared to be that of an adult, but the sex and race are unknown. He said it is not known if the skull came from a homicide victim or was a scientific artifact.

Ducoulombier said that neither Chavez nor any other residents who use the garbage cans are suspected of putting the skull there.