A 27-year-old man in Kern County, California, named Resendo Tellez, was arrested on March 22, 2024, for removing a human leg from a location other than a cemetery.
According to eyewitnesses and video footage, the man was also observed to be eating the leg.
The leg came from an unnamed individual who was killed in a train collision at an Amtrak station in Wasco, California. The person’s leg was severed in the accident.
A construction crew was laying concrete nearby when the incident took place. They reported seeing Tellez biting the leg.
“I’m not sure from where, but he walked this way and he was waving a person’s leg. And he started chewing on it over there, he was biting it, and he was hitting it against the wall and everything,” Jose Ibarra, a worker who saw the incident, said. He added that the skin was hanging off the leg, revealing bone.
Another witness recorded Tellez carrying the leg and swinging it around. The video was sent to multiple media outlets, such as ABC 23 Bakersfield and CBS affiliate KBAK.
Amtrak station employees notified the police of the heinous crime. The police arrived shortly after and arrested Tellez without any trouble at the scene.
Tellez has been charged with a misdemeanor for moving human remains from a place that was not a cemetery, a misdemeanor for possession of controlled substance paraphernalia, and a felony for violating his terms of probation.
Some information about Tellez was gathered, but very little is still known about him. Residents of Wasco claimed that Tellez was homeless and frequently slept in the doorway of a liquor store in the area.
One of the store’s employees stated that he was a regular customer who bought food or beer multiple times a day.
Security camera footage from the store showed that Tellez had made a purchase just hours before committing the crime. Apparently, Tellez had taken the severed limb because he thought it was his.
The man has faced other misdemeanor charges in the past, mostly related to drugs and alcohol. However, he has never done anything of this nature before.
