I know this is a ridiculous story, but I need a break from the Israel-Hamas Ethics Train Wreck…

In China Grove, N.C., a landscaper encountering a dead body where he was supposed to be mowing, just mowed around the body. 34-year-old Robert Owen, deceased, was dumped on the grounds of an abandoned house, and police are now investigating.

The news media seems to be accepting the excuse given by the landscaper that he thought the body was a dummy left in the field as a Halloween gag. “Don’t know how you can do that,” Owens’ sister, Haley Shue, told reporters. “Mow right beside someone and assume that they’re Halloween decorations at a house no one lives at?” I concur, Haley, particularly since the body was spotted on October 11, almost three weeks before Halloween.

What I assume happened was that the landscaper didn’t want the hassle of being involved with a mysterious dead body, so he just mowed around it. Nice citizenship there, buddy! Since he didn’t check, he avoided determining for certain what he had to suspect but didn’t want to know. The ethics breach is contrived ignorance. It’s hard to prove, often impossible. Contrived ignorance is how cowards avoid having to do the right thing.

I’ve been unlucky enough to discover three dead bodies in my life, including my father’s. It never occurred to me to say to myself, “Never mind, I’m sure it’s a gag.”

[I am adding the Sgt. Schultz clip above to the Ethics Alarms Clip Archive. It will come in handy, I suspect.]