A shopper found a dead body inside a shopping cart outside a California grocery store.
On Sunday afternoon, March 12, a body was discovered wrapped in a sheet and dumped inside a shopping cart.
Just after 4 p.m., the horrifying discovery was made outside the Food Maxx store on Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway in Chico.
A security guard was alerted and someone dialed 911.
The shopping cart was discovered near the front of the grocery store by responding officers, and further examination of the contents revealed a man’s decomposing body wrapped in a white plastic sheet.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Chico Police Department, and his body was taken to the coroner’s office.
The victim, later identified as 61-year-old Daniel Niles, had visible injuries, indicating a struggle prior to his death, according to police. Police began to investigate the man’s death as a homicide.
According to Detective Lieutenant Brian Miller of the Chico Police Department, the body had likely been inside the cart and in front of the store for several days before it was discovered.
Miller also told the outlet that police had already reviewed surveillance footage from the store, which revealed a suspect linked to the death.
The detective stated that they saw some movement in the surveillance footage and a suspect moving the shopping cart on the sidewalk.
Authorities later revealed that video surveillance showed that the shopping cart had originally been moved to a location near the bathroom, out-of-sight from the entrance to the store, but an employee had moved the shopping cart closer to entrance, allegedly without alerting authorities about the body. The corporate office of the market refused to release the video and police obtained it with a search warrant.
The Butte County District Attorney’s Office believe that Timothy Wayne Wiechert, 48, of Chico killed Niles.
Wiechert is also facing an attempted murder charge in another incident. He was charged last week with the attempted strangulation murder of a 28-year-old woman on the same morning Niles was found in the shopping cart.
A neighbor assisted the woman and she was treated and released from the hospital two days later. Wiechert suffered a broken shoulder blade during the incident and was later booked into jail and arrested.
District Attorney Mike Ramsey said If Wiechert is convicted of the attempted murder of the woman, and the murder of Niles, he faces two life terms in prison.