Google Maps Captures Image of a Car Containing the Body of a Man Missing 9 Years

Surprisingly, this isn't the first time this has happened.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Well gang, this is wild. Apparently Google Maps has captured a super unnerving image of car containing the body of a Michigan man whose family claims he was missing for nine years—the image (above) doesn't appear to be going anywhere fast. 

Woodtv.com​ reports the car was spotted Tuesday and held the body of a man "tentatively" identified by the Kent County Sheriff's Department as Davie Lee Niles, 72, who was last seen at a bar in Byron Township on October 11, 2006​. The vehicle was located in a pond by a maintanence worker at neighboring Cook Funeral Home while using a lift to install Christmas lights. From his vantage point, he spotted what appeared to be the roof of the car. From the Sheriff Department's press statement:

On Tuesday, November 10, 2015, at approximately 9:00 AM, the Kent County Sheriff’s Office Dive Team dove the pond and confirmed it was a vehicle in the pond. After obtaining the plate number, they ran the plate and it came back to a missing person case out of the City of Wyoming from October 11, 2006. The Wyoming Police Department was contacted and responded to the scene.

It was later that WNEP reported the car has been hiding in plain sight on Google all this time. Conducting a quick search of our own, the image still lives in Google Earth's database (which is spooky af). Unfortunately, this is hardly the first time that Google Maps has turned up some less-than-savory imagery.

Scott Hathaway, the missing man's son, tells Woodtv.com that the discovery has offered the family some peace. "For us today," he said, "it’s a closure of a long search."

[h/t: Huffington Post]

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