Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Tickets pile up on dead driver’s windshield
Parking officers apparently never saw body inside SUV
FORT LAUDERDALE — For four days, city parking officers slapped tickets on an SUV parked three blocks from the Broward County Courthouse. When Carolyn White noticed the pile of citations, she wondered what was going on. She stepped closer to the car to peek inside.
“Oh my God, please tell me this man is not dead,” White thought.
Inside the Isuzu Axiom was the body of Jacob Morpeau, 62, of Miami. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, and his upper body lay face down over the SUV’s center console. His hand held a credit card, White said.
The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office later said Morpeau had died from natural causes and had been ill with hypertensive cardiovascular disease. What’s not known is how long Morpeau’s body had been inside the Isuzu.
The medical examiner could not pinpoint the date of death.
The SUV was issued tickets from Nov. 12 through Nov. 15, the day Morpeau’s body was found.
Fort Lauderdale officials declined to comment on the situation. An email from
the assistant clerk said the city dismissed the $160 in parking fees “due to extenuating circumstances.”
Morpeau’s family had not heard from him for a few days before his body was discovered, according to a Fort Lauderdale police report.
Morpeau’s son, Alain Danier, one of six adult children, said his father immigrated to the United States from Haiti and had been the owner of a car sales lot in Miami. He was retired.
“He was a good man,” Danier, 34 of Sunrise said of his father, whose body was cremated. “He raised all of us and gave us everything we needed.”
Morpeau last spoke with friends about 8 p.m. Nov. 11, the son said. He said he wondered whether parking officers ever spoke with his father.
The Isuzu was parked on the north side of Southeast Sixth Street, east of Federal Highway near the Savor Cinema, according to copies of the tickets the city provided.
Two of the tickets were written within three minutes, and just six hours before White saw Morpeau’s body inside the SUV. The same parking officer cited the Isuzu for two expired meters, perhaps because the SUV’s front end was in part of the next parking space.
White said about seeing the tickets and looking into the car: “I was being nosy. I never let the meter man catch me. I never got a parking ticket, and I wanted to know why somebody else got caught. And that’s what made me look inside.”
She said she saw a walker in the back seat of the Isuzu and was curious about why someone who needed it would leave it behind. And, she said, she wonders why a parking officer didn’t see what she saw.
“I can understand why the meter person probably didn’t see him from the driver’s side,” said White, who had been parked nearby, waiting for a friend who had business at the courthouse.
“He was underneath the steering wheel, his head was in the middle of the seat, between the two seats,” White said. “But you could see him on the passenger’s side. That’s how I saw him, from the sidewalk.”
After White’s discovery, she said, her screams in the middle of Sixth Street drew Kevin McGoey, owner of Kevin’s Bail Bonds, from his business’ green cottage across Sixth Street from where the Isuzu was parked. His staff called 911, he said.
“It was sad,” McGoey said. “The guy was probably sitting there all weekend.”
The Isuzu had tinted windows.
“Maybe that’s why they couldn’t see him,” McGoey said. “Even if the guy had gone to jail, he’s got five tickets. Why not see if something was wrong? They’ve got to use a little discretion instead of just writing tickets.” Citations were issued to the Isuzu at 7:39 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, and again at 9:30 p.m. There weren’t any tickets issued Sunday.
On Monday the 14th, a parking officer wrote a ticket at 7:03 a.m. Then on Nov. 15, the Isuzu was written up at 6:39 a.m. for one meter, and again at 6:42 a.m. at the meter just next to the spot the SUV was parked in.
White came along around 12:25 p.m..
“I’m so sorry for the family,” White said. “I wish I could have been there earlier.”