Florida the rules are different here Chapter CLVI

People drop dead all over the Sunshine State on a daily basis. Even in trees and nobody even notices for two days. Isn't this a great state or what?

Hat tip- Rick at SOTP
Linked to- Bullwinkle, High Desert Wanderer, Perri Nelson, Populist,

For two days, Dorothy Sanders sauntered around in her Miami Gardens backyard, picking up fallen avocados, chatting over the chain link fence with passing neighbors -- unaware that there was a dead man in one of her trees.

Late Sunday morning, she and two neighbors searched the ground for more avocados when they looked up and saw a man in his 50s straddling a branch about 20 feet up.

''His legs were hanging down, like he was seated or something,'' Sanders said.

It seems the man was electrocuted as he attempted to get avocados from the upper branches with an 18-foot metal pole, authorities said.

A Miami-Dade police spokesman said the cause of death would not be official until the medical examiner's autopsy, but preliminary inquiry points to an accident.

''It appears he may have been picking avocados out of the tree and there was an accident possibly involving a power line,'' said Detective Juan Villalba.

Florida Power & Light temporarily cut power to the area so the man could be brought down safely.

Police did not identify the man, but relatives and friends said he was William Collier, 54, who lived a few blocks down from Sanders' little gray house at the corner of Northwest 166th Street and 22nd Court.

''It had to be an accident 'cause he knew about the power lines,'' said his niece, Alicia Collier, 41. ``He knew better.''

Her uncle, a father of two and grandfather of seven, was likely in that tree since at least 7 a.m. Friday, which is when Sanders noticed his blue bicycle and a crate with five avocados under the tree.

Thursday was the last time anyone saw Collier, friends and relatives said.