Rosendo Tellez, 27, was arrested for removal of human remains from a location other than a cemetery and theft of evidence
Horacio Ayala Peñaloza, 48, died after being hit by a train in Wasco, a city in California, in March this year. After the accident, the police arrested a man who jumped on the leg of the dead.
According to the medical examiner’s report, obtained by KBAK, Peñaloza died from multiple blunt force injuries to the head, and his death was ruled an accident. Immediately after the crime, some stunned people filmed it a 27-year-old homeless man named Rosendo Tellez, while picking up the severed leg. Witnesses said they saw the man smell the limb and shake it, before attempting to eat it.
In April following several investigations Tellez was arrested on four charges, including two counts of removal of human remains from a location other than a cemetery and theft of evidence. Although he claimed to be innocent, he was still sentenced to a year in prison
According to documents filed by sheriff’s investigators, Tellez collected the leg from the crash scene because he thought it belonged to him. In fact, one investigator stated: “Tellez told me that before the officers arrived, he saw the foot on the ground and thought it was his. So he picked him up to take him to hospital, but he got scared and ran away when people in the area started shouting at him.” In some videos from surveillance cameras, there are officers trying to make Tellez understand that he has both legs.
Other videos showed the fateful moment in which the homeless man put his nose close to Peñaloza’s lifeless limb, to smell it and was swinging it as officers approached. Another testimony comes from the worker Jose Ibarra, who was working near the station. Ibarra told the WPDE of alleged cannibalism: “I’m not sure where from, but he walked this way and was shaking a person’s leg. And he started chewing her and biting her and banging her against the wall and everything.”
