I spent the morning, and early part of the afternoon, off York Road in mid-Govans watching police and firefighters pull the decomposed body of a woman out of an underground Verizon cable vault. A Verizon worker discovered the body when he took off the manhole cover and looked inside (he was about to climb down to do some maintenance work).

Police got there about 10:15 a.m. but firefighters didn't pull out the body until about 1:35 p.m. Fire Lt. Scott Merbach told me that the steps leading 10 feet to the bottom of the hole were rusted and firefighters had to be lowered down into the hole using a pulley attached to a tripod. Pictures from the scene are by the Baltimore Sun's Jed Kirschbaum.

Merbach, who heads the Fire Department's Special Rescue Operations unit, said it took hours to get the body out because his team had to follow federal safety guidelines for confined rescues. That meant four fighters had to put on wet suits and air masks. They had to be attached to safety harnesses and two went down and the other two stood guard and were dressed to descend in an emergency.

Verizon workers, instead of splicing cables, pumped water out of the hole; police told me there was five feet of water in the 8 by 8-foot vault, and they all but a foot out before the firefighters went down. The body was that of a white female, fully dressed, but missing her feet and hands. One foot was found near the body, which was floating face down in the water, and still in a shoe.

Cops are awaiting the results of an autopsy to determine how she died and whether the death is classified a homicide. She was too decomposed to make an immediate determination. The body parts could've become severed through decomposition, an animal or being cut off.

It was a scene just off York Road.