27-year-old Resendo Tellez, a resident of California, USA, was arrested after he stole a severed human leg from the scene of an accident involving a train, walked away, and began to eat it.
On March 22, 2024, in Wasco, California, a train struck and killed a pedestrian who was crossing the tracks at an unauthorized location. Among the injuries inflicted on the victim was the complete severance of one leg below the knee.
Before paramedics could arrive at the scene, a vagrant in a red sweatshirt appeared, grabbed the severed leg, and fled with it onto the pedestrian path.
His subsequent actions were captured on video by one of the local residents, and the horrifying footage was shared on social media (it has since been removed, and only screenshots or heavily blurred portions of the video remain).
In the video, the vagrant bends down and appears to bite the leg, then walks away on the path, waving the severed leg in the air upon realizing he is being filmed.
“I’m not sure where he came from, but he was walking this way, swinging the person’s leg. And he started chewing on it over there, he was biting it, hitting it against the wall and all,” said Jose Ibarra, a worker who witnessed the horrific incident.
“The skin was hanging off the leg. You could clearly see the bone,” Ibarra continued.
Later, the police identified the vagrant as 27-year-old homeless man Resendo Tellez, who had never been implicated in cannibalism or the craving for human body parts before and was an unremarkable homeless person.
According to court records, he has several convictions for minor offenses, mostly related to drugs and alcohol, but he has never been charged with stealing or consuming human body parts.
Tellez was found and arrested the next day, charged with the removal of body parts from a place that is not a cemetery or burial ground, destruction or concealment of evidence, and resisting law enforcement.