Memorial Day Weekend: A Strange Encounter at Food Lion

On the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, my wife woke up to multiple responses from her Facebook Marketplace post about selling our three-foldable bookshelves. My wife responded to a woman and suggested we meet at Food Lion at 3 p.m.

My parents and sister were also in town for Memorial Weekend, and since my dad’s birthday is in early June, we decided to celebrate while he was here. My wife was preparing the birthday dinner and forgot about the Food Lion meetup. It was 5 p.m. when she checked her phone and realized she had forgotten when the buyer messaged her.

Surprisingly, the buyer was still at Food Lion two hours after the scheduled meetup. My wife and I rushed the bookshelves in my Bronco and drove to Food Lion, a 10-minute drive from our house. 

The woman was parked in the back of the Food Lion parking lot under a tree shade. She had her toddler daughter with her. Despite waiting for two hours, she had a pleasant attitude. She said she and her daughter were enjoying the nice weather and having a picnic. I saw a fruit platter in the middle console when she opened her car door.

I parked next to a black Mazda. When my wife exited the car on the passenger side, she looked in the car next to us as people naturally do. When she came around to my side, she told me that she thought the woman in the car was dead.

My immediate response was, “What?“ I looked over at the car, and I could see a white woman’s legs bent up in the driver’s seat. I couldn’t see her upper body, but from my point of view, it just looked like someone lying across the driver and passenger seats sleeping.

I asked my wife what makes you think she’s dead? 

My wife said it looked like she OD. Her eyes were open, and she looked blue. 

Mind you, our bookshelves buyer was standing outside her car, too, and heard our conversation. The black Mazda has been there for at least as long as the buyer was there, so if my wife said the woman was dead, then she was dead. A body sitting for at least two hours at 71 degrees, especially from an overdose, would not look like they were sleeping.

The buyer didn’t seem concerned at all. She didn’t want to look over there; she just wanted her bookshelves and left. 

While I loaded the bookshelves in the buyer’s car, my wife went inside Food Lion and told a clerk that a woman sitting inside a car didn’t look well. The clerk said they would call emergency services but had to help a customer first.

My wife and I debated whether to leave or wait for the emergency services. It’s not like there was anything else we could do. But then we saw the clerk come out, and he was walking to the wrong vehicle, so we stayed and directed him. He looked in the car and immediately became frantic. He could tell the woman was dead. 

He called 911 and gave the phone to my wife. The clerk ran back inside Food Lion to grab his manager, who used to be an EMT for the Navy, so he was at least the most qualified to determine that the woman was dead. He also checked her pulse. 

The dispatcher asked my wife to pull the woman out of the car and give her chest compressions, but neither my wife, me, nor the clerk were touching that woman. When the clerk opened the door, I could smell the decomposing body. The deceased also had a small dog in the car that desperately wanted to get out. I said out loud that I could smell the body. 

The clerk said that’s just a dog.

I could tell he wasn’t processing the situation.

I’m like, nah, I shouldn’t be able to smell a dog standing a few feet from outside the car. 

When the police and firetruck showed up, they looked into the car but didn’t pull her out either. Even they could see that the woman was dead. 

My wife gave one of the police officers her name and number, and we left.

I searched for information about the incident the following day but found nothing. I do wonder what her name was. What exactly was the cause of death? She probably didn’t want to die but could have had her drugs laced with fentanyl. I wonder what her life was like and how it led to this.