Ammon News - A man in Missouri, US is suspected of attempting insurance fraud by allegedly arranging for someone to cut both his legs and stage a tractor accident to cover it up. The Howell County Sheriff’s Office investigated the case which involved a 60-year-old man from Willow Springs who claimed to have lost both legs in a brush hog accident. However, inconsistencies arose, such as the absence of his severed legs, the unusually clean wounds inconsistent with a brush hog and his known status as a paraplegic, raising doubts about how he could have been in the path of a tractor-operated brush hog.

Torey Thompson, a lieutenant with the Howell County Sheriff’s Office, stated to the Springfield News Reader, “If a brush hog did it, it would have been a bloody, gory mess. I’ve seen those types of accidents before. This wasn’t like that.” Additionally, officers and medical personnel at the accident scene were puzzled by the tourniquets on the man’s leg stumps and who applied them immediately after the incident. Subsequent investigation revealed that a Florida man had reportedly visited the victim with a hatchet and severed his legs for a fee.

The 60-year-old paraplegic had implemented a scheme to commit insurance fraud, opting to have his legs amputated in a staged accident since he no longer had any use for them. However, as he had not yet filed a claim with the insurance company, there were no grounds for charging him. Lieutenant Thompson remarked, “It was a poorly executed plan, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

Despite being unable to charge the paraplegic man with insurance fraud formally, the sheriff’s office contemplated pressing charges for filing a false police/EMS report due to the waste of time and resources. However, due to the severity of the man’s injuries, incarceration was impractical, so the decision was made to allow him to recover in a hospital. Remarkably, the man’s severed legs were discovered by a relative concealed in a bucket hidden by tyres, and they were surrendered to investigators.

News 18