Body that was set on fire found in garage can in Detroit

"I was out here starting the barbecue pit.  I heard the noise like somebody was creeping back here, but before that I [saw] three guys coming from Schaffer way," said a neighbor.

They were dragging a garbage container.  A woman, who wanted us to conceal her identity, didn't think anything of it until a short time later when neighbors started yelling "fire" and flames started shooting up between their garages on Margareta Street near Sorrento on Detroit's west side.

"I saw the flames coming from the back.  I saw my teenager with a pail of water, and they came back here where another neighbor was trying to douse it out," said Carmen Abner.  "We got a flashlight and we started shining it, and that's when somebody started hollering, 'Oh my god, it's a body, it's a body.'"

Neighbors think these guys were looking for a place to dump the body, but then they decide on this place because neighbors say there are no streetlights.  They dragged the container into the alley and then set it on fire.

Adults and children made the gruesome discovery, a charred body wrapped in a blue sheet standing straight up in a Courville dumpster.  They immediately dialed 911.

"I have never seen [anything] like that.  All you [saw] was his chest and up that was on fire.  They basically stripped him naked and put him in the can and set him on fire," the neighbor said.

"He was killed before they set him on fire.  That's all they would say," said Abner.

Police have little to go on.  The identity of the victim, describe as a black male in his late teens or early twenties, is still unknown.  His autopsy results are pending.

Neighbors are trying to work with police, giving them any informing about a crime that happened basically in their own backyard just a few feet away from their Fourth of July
festivities.

"This is too close to home.  That's somebody's father, son, nephew, that was in that can.  Now you all have this family out here searching for their loved one, and this is how you find him?  This is how you're going to find him.  It's sad," said the neighbor.