Homeless woman lived in sign above Michigan supermarket for more than a year
Contractors curious about an extension cord on the roof of a Michigan grocery store found a 34-year-old woman living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said.
“She was homeless,” Officer Brennon Warren of the Midland Police Department said Thursday.
“It’s a story that makes you scratch your head, just somebody living up in a sign.”
The woman, whose name was not disclosed, told police she had a job elsewhere but had been living inside the Family Fare sign for about a year, Warren said. She was found on April 23.
Midland, best known as the global home of Dow Inc., is 209 kilometres north of Detroit.
The Family Fare store is in a retail strip with a triangularshaped sign at the top of the building.
The sign structure, about 1.5 metres wide and 2.4 metres high, has a door and is accessible from the roof, Warren said.
“There was some flooring that was laid down, a mini desk,” he said. “Her clothing, a Keurig coffee maker, a printer and a computer — things you’d have in your home.”
The woman was able to get electricity through a power cord plugged into an outlet on the roof, Warren said.
There was no sign of a ladder. Warren said it’s possible the woman made her way to the roof by climbing up elsewhere behind the store or other retail businesses.
A spokesperson for SpartanNash, the parent company of Family Fare, said store employees responded “with the utmost compassion and professionalism.”
Warren said the woman was co-operative and quickly agreed to leave. No charges were pursued.