Stolen Car Held Human Tissue Samples

Police have arrested a woman suspected of stealing a vehicle that contained irreplaceable human tissue samples.

After an investigation, police determined that on Nov. 27, Roseanne Caroline Decarli, 22, stole a Toyota Corolla parked in Mountain View that belonged to a pathology lab.

The automobile was found Dec. 8 in Hayward, empty and missing a cooler that contained 30 human tissue samples that had not yet been tested for illnesses such as cancer.

San Jose police encountered Decarli during a traffic stop Dec. 10, when she was driving a different vehicle reportedly stolen out of Newark, Calif. She also had a credit card that belonged to the driver of the Corolla from the pathology lab, which linked her to the crime.

Decarli had allegedly dumped the cooler holding the tissue samples into a trash bin in Hayward a couple of days after stealing the Corolla.

Investigators are searching for the container at a landfill, but Mountain View police spokesman Jim Bennett said it’s unlikely the samples will ever be found.

“You’re talking about 10 days worth of more garbage put out there,” Bennett said.

Some tissue samples, such as wholly removed moles or tumors, are irreplaceable, “so they won’t be able to tell if it was actually a cancerous or malignant tumor or mole,” Bennett said.