A 24-year-old New York City man remains jailed after he was found allegedly having sex with a
92-year-old woman's corpse inside the morgue of the hospital where he worked.
Anthony Merino, who works as a lab technician at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, N.J., was arrested Sunday after police responded to a call from a security guard at the hospital. The guard reported witnessing the lab technician sexually desecrating the woman's dead body, according to police.
"This is a first," Lt. Dean Kazinci, spokesman for the Teaneck, N.J., police, told ABC News. "When you think you've heard and seen it all, something like this happens."
Kazinci said the security guards at the hospital told police that they caught Merino in the act of necrophilia. They transported Merino to the police station, he said, and charged him after conducting a police interview.
A spokesman for Holy Name Hospital released a statement to ABC News calling the allegations a "heinous crime."
"We are horrified and saddened for the family of the patient and are completely empathic and sympathetic to them," the statement reads.
Merino had only been working at the hospital for 14 days, according to the statement, and had passed a criminal background check before he was offered the job. The hospital also notified the dead woman's next of kin after contacting authorities.
