On the morning of October 16, a body was found in a grain car carrying corn to Tyson Foods in Hempstead County near Fulton, Arkansas.
According to reports, deputies were called to the Tyson feed mill at 4:20 a.m. when employees discovered what they believed to be the arm of a person in the unloading chute underneath the train car.
Deputies opened the top of the grain car and found a body wedged in the bottom of the empty car. After being unable to retrieve the body, a wrecker service was called to assist. They gained access through the top of the car by lowering a cable through the car and moving a piece of metal out of the way.
The deputies eventually retrieved the badly decomposed body of an adult male and the coroner officially pronounced him dead at the scene.
According to reports, the 100-car train dropped off soybeans in Mexico then proceeded empty to Missouri where it was loaded with corn on October 14. From there, it was sent to Hope, Arkansas, where Kiamichi railroad transported the train to the Tyson feed mill for unloading.
The case remains under investigation.
Tyson Foods’ opened the $75 million poultry feed mega-mill in Fulton in July 2022. The feed mill was designed to produce 13,000 tons of finished feed in a week and load 115 rail cars in 11 hours. According to the mill manager at the time of its opening, when paired with the new hatchery, it would be one of the largest animal feed mills in the country.
