Felipe Figueroa, 67, is a retired bus driver who doesn’t want to sit around the house all day, so he still shows up for work at 5:30 a.m. weekdays at Happy Day Transit Inc., a bus company in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

He parked his car the morning of May 5 and noticed something on the street, like a long box, with blankets and plastic on top. He noticed the poles, running along the length of the box, and immediately recognized them: the handles grasped by pallbearers at a funeral.

People have dumped things like mattresses and garbage at this dead-end stub of Pilling Street. But never a coffin. More troubling, it was just a few feet from the back fence of the Evergreens Cemetery — but very much on the wrong side of that fence.

Mr. Figueroa called the 311 municipal information line and was transferred to 911. Police officers arrived and took a closer look at the coffin, which was collapsed and dilapidated from age. Deputy Inspector Maximo A. Tolentino, the commanding officer of the local police precinct, took a picture and posted it on Twitter.