A man’s dead body was found in the lawn of an abandoned house in China Grove, North Carolina. Robert Owens, 34, went unnoticed for days, being mistaken for a Halloween prop. A local groundskeeper even mowed around him, and he was sadly discovered to be a decomposing body a day later.

A police statement said the groundskeeper saw the body the day before the police were alerted, but thought it was a training dummy. “He believed the body to be a fake dummy used for training by numerous law agencies on the property over the last few years and did not report it,” the statement said. However, the victim’s sister, Haley Shue, told Queen City News that the body was mistaken for a Halloween prop. “Don’t know how you can do that,” Shue said, “Mow right beside someone and assume that they’re Halloween decorations at a house no one lives at.”

He was last seen by his family on October 1st. His family unfortunately doesn’t know what could’ve happened to Owens, but they have been demanding answers. “A construction worker told us he had cuts and scrapes on his arms, like defensive wounds,” Shue said. An investigation is currently being worked on this case.