From today's NYT:

...after Mr. Cintron recently died, Mr. O’Hare, 65, and another friend, David Daloia, also 65, whose last known address was in Queens, tried, without success, to cash a Social Security check of Mr. Cintron’s, the police say. They realized that they needed their dead buddy’s help.

So on Tuesday afternoon, the police say, they dressed Mr. Cintron’s corpse, carried him down a flight of stairs and heaved his body into a computer chair with wheels. Outside, they rolled him over the uneven sidewalk, pulling the chair toward Pay-O-Matic, a check-cashing shop on Ninth Avenue.

But as the men turned the corner, trying to steady the floppy corpse, they ran into the law. At Empanada Mama, a restaurant next door to the Pay-O-Matic, Travis L. Rapp, a detective, had sat down to lunch.

Detective Rapp looked out the window and saw the unwieldy trio. Something about the way they struggled to balance the man in the chair caught his eye.

“At this point, when they approached closer, I saw the body and I said, ‘Well, this is a dead guy,’ ” Detective Rapp said on Wednesday in a phone briefing.

“I ran out and said, ‘Where are you guys going, what’s going on?’ ” the detective said. “The roommate, O’Hare, said: ‘I am cashing my friend’s check. I have to bring him inside to cash his check. He needs to cash his check.’ ”

Detective Rapp identified himself as police officer and called an ambulance. He noticed that the body was stiff.

“When they dragged his feet, his feet were just very rigid and they were bouncing off the edge of the sidewalk, and I knew right then and there that he was dead.”

Still, Mr. O’Hare was trying to get Mr. Cintron’s body into the check-cashing store.

“I said: ‘You are not bringing him anywhere. Just leave him alone.’ I said, ‘Don’t touch him.’ ”

It was not clear what had caused Mr. Cintron’s death, although the police do not suspect any foul play. An autopsy was completed on Wednesday but more tests were needed, the city medical examiner’s office said.