Man Found Dead in the Backseat of His Qashqai, Issued Ticket

A Cambridge parking warden ticketed a car without even seeing that the owner was lying dead in the backseat. The law officer issued the fine as the car had exceeded the time limit at a car park, but hadn’t noticed the body inside the car, supposedly having suffered a heart attack.

At 11.45 Thursday morning, the police were called to the car park by the River Cam where the grey Nissan Qashqai had overstayed its time. They found out that the driver, presumed to be in his fifties, was dead. An investigation tent was raised at the scene while forensic officers examined the scene. Maybe if the parking attendant would have been more attentive and had called an ambulance rather than write a ticket, the man could have survived.

"What you have to do is look in the car to see if there is a ticket displayed,” said Phillip Hammer, the Cambridgeshire County Council parking manager for The Daily Mail.

"He didn't see anyone in there at first and then he realised there was someone slumped in the back seat. He is very disturbed by what happened.”

The parking warden had done his job not attempting to wake up the man, even if he had noticed him there before he issued the ticket.

"He is really shaken up by it," he continued. "The thing is, we are not allowed to wake people up in their cars if they are asleep in case we give them a heart attack."

The police has confirmed that the man’s death was of natural causes, and has not been treated as suspicious. It’s sometimes amazing what people would do to avoid paying a parking ticket, but as it turns out, this old fellow wasn’t faking.