I know times are hard, people, but there has to be a better way to make some money than this.

The Howell County Sheriff's Department released a relatively vague press release regarding a "staged" incident involving a tractor-attached brush hog, which is great for mulching small bushes and trees.

It will also mulch your feet if you stick them under it, which is what a 911 call said happened to an unnamed man in Missouri.

However, when the authorities showed up, there was something wrong.

Lieutenant Torey Thompson said,

If it was done by a brush hog, it would have been a bloody, gory mess. I've seen those types of accidents before. This wasn't like that.

The man's feet had been severed, but they had not been mulched.

Thompson continued,

The man was in his 60s and a known paraplegic in his lower extremities. Authorities were immediately curious about the tourniquets on his legs and who put them there in the immediate aftermath of the alleged accident.

The footless man apparently had some help.

Not only that, but his feet had gone missing. Thompson said,

A couple days after, we got a call that a relative found them in a bucket obscured by tires, so we went and got them.

So what exactly happened?

Apparently, the man had intended to commit insurance fraud and had a friend drive up from Florida with a hatchet.

(Yes, Florida Man makes an appearance in this story.)

However, while the footless man had a lengthy stay in the hospital, he never got around to filing that insurance claim, so no criminal charges were filed.

Annoyed by the resources it wasted on this situation, the sheriff's office considered pursuing criminal charges of filing a false police/EMS report, Thompson said, but the man was so severely injured from the incident that it would have been an arduous process to have him in jail.

Sometimes people's stupidity is just too much trouble to deal with.

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