A Southwest Airlines employee got a rude surprise at work in Little Rock on June 9, and it wasn't from an unruly passenger - not a live one, anyway, according to a report on an NBC website.


Southwest Airlines planes at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. A Southwest employee in Little Rock recently found a box of human heads that were headed to Fort Worth, Texas.CAPTIONBy Ted S. Warren, Associated PressThe employee opened a box from a courier and discovered between 40 and 60 human heads on their way to a medical research facility in Fort Worth, the website and other news organizations reported.

"It wasn't labeled or packaged properly," Southwest spokeswoman Ashley Rogers told NBC. "They called the local authorities."

The Little Rock police then turned the gruesome package over to the county coroner, NBC reported. Pulaski County coroner Garland Camper told the network his office wanted to make sure the heads weren't intended for the black market in body parts.



The heads were on their way to a facility run by Medtronic, a Minnesota-based medical research firm. Medtronic spokesman Brian Henry told NBC it's common for body parts to be shipped for education and research.

The coroner, however, told the network that the paperwork associated with the package had discrepancies. He also told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he is waiting for documentation to show that the heads were obtained legally and being shipped for a legal purpose.

NBC reported that supplier JLS Consulting of Wynne, Ark., had its license revoked in December.

The Arkansas paper did reach company founder Janice Hepler, who blamed the problem on the courier she hired to ship the heads.

In the meantime, Camper told the Democrat-Gazette, the heads will stay at the morgue. "I'm not just going to release a bucket of heads to go across the country without verifying that these were indeed lawfully obtained," he told the paper.

(Posted by Melanie Eversley)