You Can’t Escape Death, Taxes, or Parking Tickets

When you’re walking past a car do you look inside? I do. Whether I’m in a parking lot or on the street, I tend to take a look. It’s important to know your surroundings. If there is someone in the car, I move further away. I don’t want anyone jumping out and abducting me. If someone is parked on the street outside my house and the vehicle is unfamiliar, I keep an eye on it. If someone is sitting in that car but doesn’t get out, I notice.

Parking wardens in Michigan could learn a thing or two from me about being observant. Jayme Earle, a 26 year old man from Kalamazoo, was found dead in his pickup truck on Thursday. He had been reported missing Thursday after his co-worker began to worry that he’d missed two days of work. Pay attention, this is going to get stranger than Big Foot, who also hails from Michigan. Stranger than finding a man dead in his vehicle is the fact that he was parked in a no parking zone, and had received not one, but two parking tickets between Tuesday and the time he was discovered on Thursday.

I’ve personally never received a parking ticket, but I’ve watched them being written. I’ve watched them being shoved under windshield wipers. I’ve even seen them wedged into the side window of vehicles. In each case, the officer had to gather information from the vehicle and get close enough to the vehicle to look inside. In this case, twice.

How officials managed to miss the dead man in the passenger seat is beyond comprehension. Officers state that they cannot be sure that the dead man was in the vehicle when the tickets were written, though it’s difficult to imagine he parked in a no parking zone, went about his business, then returned two days later climbed into the passenger side of the truck, then expired. Police are investigating the death, though they said there was no sign of foul play, you know except the fact that he was parked illegally and died in the passenger seat of his own vehicle. Except those things… nothing out of the ordinary.

Earle leaves behind a two young children and other family members… and apparently two unpaid parking tickets.

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