A man has been found dead inside a supply freezer at a Food Lion grocery store in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Raleigh Police Department reported the discovery on Tuesday, saying that the man likely suffered a medical emergency before his death on Monday night.
Authorities responded to the store at 4500 block of Capital Boulevard in Raleigh after employees discovered their co-worker’s body early Tuesday morning. Raleigh Police Department told Newsweek the investigation is ongoing.
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The identity of the deceased has not been released, and further details regarding the nature of the medical emergency remain unclear.
The Food Lion grocery store where the incident took place declined to comment.
The incident is not the first time a body has been found in a workplace freezer.
In 2023, an Arby’s manager in New Iberia, Louisiana, was found dead in a walk-in freezer, where no foul play was suspected. Nguyet Le, 63, became trapped in the freezer after a latch malfunctioned
In 2022, the body of Mahamadou Dansogo, an employee at Beigel’s Bakery in Brooklyn New York, was found by his co-workers in a walk-in freezer. He became caught in the gears of a machine and was killed by blunt-force trauma to the head, torso and extremities.
In 2019, contractors in an Iowa supermarket found behind a cooler the body of a man who had disappeared in 2009.
Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, 25, was working at the No Frills Supermarket in Council Bluffs, Iowa when he went missing.
Council Bluffs Police Sergeant Brandon Danielson told the Des Moines Register that the 25-year-old instantly came to mind when he heard that a body had been found.
The remains were sent for DNA testing and compared to DNA taken from Murillo-Moncada’s parents.
An autopsy showed no signs of trauma and the supermarket employee’s death has been ruled an accident.
Authorities said they believed Murillo-Moncada climbed on top of the freezer, which fellow employees said was not uncommon due to storage facilities up there. It is thought he fell into a gap between the back of the units and the wall that measured about 18 inches and became trapped. Any cries for help would have been drowned out by the sound of the freezer.
