Possible human remains found near bus stop in Kissimmee, Osceola County Sheriff says

KISSIMMEE, Fla. - The Osceola County Sheriff's Office said possible human remains were found on Wednesday near a bus stop in Kissimmee, and not far from a local high school.

Sheriff Marcos R. Lopez said someone at a bus stop found what is believed to be a human skull in a wooded area off Pleasant Hill Road near Wilderness Trail, across the street from Liberty High School.

He said clothing and other items were found near the bones. "We do believe it’s been here for a few months because of what the bones are looking like right now," Lopez said.

Joyce Swistock remembers smelling a bad odor in the same area back in September. "I said, ‘oh it smells like a dead body.’ But then I said, ‘it’s probably an animal in the woods,'" Swistock said. 

What happened near the bus stop remains a mystery. "You see bones, a skull, what we believe to be human remains, clothing and personal belongings… We’ll treat it as suspicious until we can say it’s not," Lopez said.

For neighbors, it’s an uneasy feeling. "I guess the unnerving part is not knowing the disposition of what happened," Matthew Mettler said. "I think once we get some details it will be better."

Swistock wonders if she should have reported the odd smell months ago. "I hate the thought that it was possibly a body, and maybe I should have had someone go looking. I don’t know," she said. 

Lopez encourages people to call in anything suspicious. "Sometimes some things are right under our noses and we don’t see it. If someone doesn’t call it to our attention, this is such a heavily traveled roadway, we don’t know."

Lopez said he'll be checking all the missing persons cases as well. The Medical Examiner will determine cause of death, if they are human remains.