Woman Expected a Shipment of Medication. She Was Sent a Box of Human Body Parts Instead

A Kentucky woman expecting a shipment of medication received a box of body parts instead — mailed right to her front door.

The unnamed woman from Hopkinsville, outside of Nashville, called emergency services after opening the gruesome packages on Oct. 29. “They delivered two boxes,” she said in a 911 call obtained by NBC affiliate WSMV about her surprise discovery. “We opened one box and it turned out to be human body parts.”

The box contained two arms and four fingers surrounded by ice packs, Christian County Coroner Scott Daniel, who was summoned to the woman’s home to retrieve the parts, tells PEOPLE. He also confirms that nothing outside the box’s packaging indicated that there were body parts inside. The severed limbs and digits weren’t shipped via regular mail, but rather were sent through a private courier.

“It was just an error,” Daniel tells PEOPLE about the mixup. “I think her box and that box [of body parts]  had come into the Nashville airport…The courier that was supposed to have picked up the body parts picked up her meds. And then the second courier that was supposed to get the body parts picked up [the women’s box]. It was just a reversed delivery.”

Daniel also confirms that the package of body parts were for surgical training and not for transplant. “Those parts were not supposed to leave Nashville,” he adds. “They were supposed to be in Nashville.”

The coroner says that he was able to get in touch with the courier as well as the facility that was supposed to receive the body parts. That package was picked up and was delivered to its intended destination.

Meanwhile, the woman’s medical supplies that she had initially been waiting for arrived a day later.

“I called her that next day to kind of check on her and make sure all that was okay. And she had received her package,” Daniel says.

Asked to recall the woman’s reaction when he arrived at the home to pick up the box of body parts, Daniel says: “We were two days before Halloween, She thought it was some kind of a prank or Halloween decorations literally delivered to the wrong house. When I got there, she was not shaken up.”

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“When I walked in, she was on the phone with the company that was supposed to have delivered her medical equipment. She wasn’t just distraught, but she was obviously surprised.”

Looking back at what happened, Daniel says it was “bizarre,” adding, “But to be two days before Halloween, it magnified that for sure … [to have] fresh arms and fingers delivered to the front porch of a home.”

And as he shared to The New York Times, while he “didn’t ask” about the source of the body parts, he said “I’d assume, obviously, I think they came from cadavers that had been donated.” He advised anyone else in the same predicament to do what she did: Call 911 or local police.

“I think she did the right thing,” he said.