Groundskeeper mistakes dead body for Halloween feature in North Carolina.. mows around it

I mow my grass with a great amount of pride. I enjoy having a nice looking yard and my neighbors are the same way. In a sort of round about way, it is a competition of sorts and well, we are all winners because we share tips and the only asshole on my stretch of road is the guy who is kind of cheating when he had an irrigation system professionally installed. The rest of us water our yards old school style, with the primary tool being one of these guys.

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This amazing piece of machinery is a design that is older than I am and it is absolutely brilliant. The front wheel uses the hose itself as a track and the water pressure slowly moves the tractor across your yard in order to ensure that you get just the right amount of water on all of the grass. I've used this thing for 20 years and because it is a very simplistic piece of equipment, it basically never breaks.

This isn't really the point of this post though.

Recently, in the past few weeks, a groundskeeper that is charged with maintaining abandoned property grass was doing his municipal job cutting grass because long grass attracts snakes, rodents, and other nuisances, when he encountered a body near the street.

The groundskeeper, who cannot be faulted with anything because he was just doing his mundane city job, mowed around the body thinking that it was some sort of spooky feature that someone had set up in the China Grove neighborhood, which during this time of year, is actually kind of common. People set up fake cemeteries and other such fun stuff all over the place and even in my own neighborhood, we do this on property that is not our own.

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The dreary and ominous aspect of all of this is that the body of Robert Owens had been stripped of all clothes other than socks and underpants and had been there for days. It is being investigated as to what happened but the kicker here is that Owens' family and friends never reported him missing. This is going to be a really difficult case for the police because as it stands now, there are no real signs of foul play, nor is there any sort of information that indicates that Robert had any enemies that were out to get him.

The family and friends are now doing what I think is the wrong thing and are seeking what I call "mountain justice" in that they are independently attempting to find out who is responsible and get revenge.

One friend posted this on the GoFundMe page that was set up to pay for Owens' funeral expenses.

"We have evidence that has been handed over to the detective. If you're reading this and you were involved just now you will get what you deserve very soon,"

Look, I'm all about handing things outside of the authorities whenever possible, but this sort of reaction to me just seems like people who end up being suspected, but actually had nothing to do with it, could end up getting hurt. The police are far from perfect, but in a state like North Carolina where 50% of the population is armed, things could get out of hand really fast.

I hope that the friends and family of Robert Owens are simply overcome with guilt right now and are writing things online to get the funding that they need for the funeral, and just leave it at that. Nothing good can come from this if they attempt to pursue revenge on their own personally.