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Human Body Found In Shallow Grave At North Highlands Home

NORTH HIGHLANDS (CBS13) — Sacramento County sheriff's deputies say a maintenance worker remodeling a home on the 6700 block of Dundee Drive two days ago discovered human bones in the backyard.

Detectives later discovered an entire skeleton in a shallow grave.

The home has been vacant for about a month after the owner says he evicted the tenants who lived in his home at the end of November, claiming they destroyed the home.

Now, detectives are trying to figure out who buried the body, and whose bones were inside the grave.

"It was shocking, we just had to call the cops," said the homeowner.

The owner doesn't want to be identified, but he's been remodeling the home after he says his tenants trashed it earlier this year.

"Once the trash was pretty much cleared, a cat was digging in that one area, and my friend noticed that it was a bone," the homeowner said.

The owner called the sheriff's department, and the deputies who responded confirmed they were human bones.

"We believe the body has been there for quite some time and is in various stages of decomposition," said Sgt. Shaun Hampton.

It took detectives two days to exhume the entire skeleton. The identity is still a mystery.

"We are investigating this as a suspicious death; we do not have a cause of death, we do not have a sex or an age, or anything of that nature," Sgt. Hampton added.

"It's scary, we don't know who our neighbor is," said Raymond Kidd.

He says he's watched different people come in and out of the home in the four years he's lived in the neighborhood.

The shallow grave is shaking up a mostly quiet neighborhood — the skeletal remains have stumped the homeowner and detectives.

"We just wanted to do the right thing, whoever that is their family can have peace and rest," the homeowner concluded.

The Sacramento County coroner is now investigating the identity of those remains.

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