WASHINGTON – A man has been arrested and charged with leaving a dead body near a house for a Virginia family to find when they came home from a trip.
The Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that the residents of a house on Enchanted Woods Way came back from vacation and found a body in their yard Sunday morning, later identified as Deandre Miller-Caldwell, 23, of Spotsylvania.
After talking with neighbors, investigators learned that on Thursday night, Miller-Caldwell had been riding in a car driven by Jarred Smith, 23, of Locust Grove, when Miller-Caldwell, who had used heroin, lost consciousness. That forced Smith to lose control of the car and drive into a ditch, the sheriff’s office said.
When people stopped to help Smith, they saw Miller-Caldwell’s body in the ditch, but Smith hid the body just before law enforcement showed up at the scene of the crash, the sheriffs said.
Smith has been charged with concealing a dead body, and is being held in the regional jail without bond.
