Tennessee Authorities Investigate Human Heart Found in Department of Transportation Salt Pile

Authorities are investigating the discovery of a human heart in a salt pile at a Tennessee Department of Transportation facility.

Workers at the facility in McEwen were making preparations for inclement weather Thursday when they came across something unusual that was later confirmed to be a human heart, Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said. Officers were searching other salt piles at the facility Friday.

The organ was transported to the state medical examiner's office in Nashville, where testing of tissue samples confirmed that it was an adult male human heart, Davis said. The heart had been dehydrated by the salt and it was unclear how long it had been there, he said.

Davis told WKRN-TV in Nashville that the facility was being treated as a crime scene. He encouraged anyone who thinks they might have information about what might have happened to reach out to TBI or the sheriff’s office.

“Everybody's somebody's somebody, and at the end of the day it would bother me if I laid down my head at night not knowing that we'd done everything we can for this person and this person's family," Davis told The Associated Press.