Police in Yuma, Ariz., follow fishy lead

[August 26, 2011]  YUMA, Ariz. (AP) -- When officers in Yuma, Ariz., responded to complaints about an offensive odor coming from a vacant store, they thought they might stumble across a gory crime scene.

Instead what they found was just plain fishy.

Sgt. Clint Norred tells the Yuma Sun (http://bit.ly/o1F0Wz) police received calls about the "suspicious foul smell" coming from a hobby shop Wednesday. An adjacent tenant said the stench was wafting through the walls and getting stronger by the day.

Norred says the hobby shop's owners were apparently out of town, so officers decided to enter the store and make sure there wasn't a body or drug lab inside.

They did find something dead -- but not a person. It was a refrigerator full of rotting, smelly fish.

Norred says the shop's electricity was turned off, and the fish had begun to turn putrid following days of excessive heat. "So you can imagine," he says, "it was quite pungent."

[Associated Press]

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