remember -- when in doubt, declare!

[lagilman]

from bbc.news...

US immigration officials have arrested a Haitian woman after baggage screeners found a human head in her luggage at a Florida airport. Myrlene Severe, 30, has been charged with failing to declare the head on a customs form and transporting "hazardous material".

(me: WTF? it's sort of like getting Capone on tax evasion charges, isn't it?)

She arrived at Florida's Fort Lauderdale airport on Thursday on a flight from Cap Haitien in north Haiti. Ms Severe said that the head was to ward off evil sprits, officials said.

"Severe stated that she had obtained the package, which contained a human head, from a male in Haiti for use as part of her voodoo beliefs," the US Attorney's Office said in a statement. A spokesman for Miami's immigration and customs agency told the AFP news agency that the head was not simply a skull. "It had teeth, hair and skin, and quite a lot of dirt," she said.


*facepalm*

Comments

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

This story, along with the low wages and minimal benefits, have driven to me to seek employment as a baggage screener.

Hello, wonderful new life!

[onalark.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, this is actually very common in Vodou (the skulls, not trying to sneak one through customs). There are usually two skulls: one male, one female, and they're supposed to represent the first mother and the first father. Most peristyles have one. They dig them out of the graveyards (which explains the dirt).

Still, you'd have to be pretty nuckin' futz to try and transport one that way. :P

[lagilman]

Yeah. The owning, okay, not my thing but then hey, some folk don't like candles, or icons, or whathaveyou. It's the trying to get it past customs, like it was a joint tucked into your shoe, or a particularly stinky live milk cheese in your computer bag....

(of course, I also wondered if she could claim that there was no place on the customs form to declare 'unverified human remains, head, value worth less than $25'...)

[agamisu.livejournal.com]

Niiiiice.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

You'd think they'd know to mail those sorts of things.

In sealed bags, packed with cedar chips and mothballs, perhaps...

{Grin}

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

After living in So. Florida for three years which has a very large Haitian population... I am not shocked at all. This is actually more common than advertised. Now, had she bagged it, tagged it as hazmat and declared it--- it may have just come through. Haitian Vuduon, sapase ma buley!
-=Jeff=-