A man charged with abusing his mother’s corpse and leaving it in a car outside a Penn Township home will have his case proceed to county court following a preliminary hearing earlier today.

Judge Torrey Landis ruled that the case of Kevin Hyun Ahn, who has no fixed residence but whose last address was in Schuylkill Haven, could proceed to the Court of Common Pleas on a single count of abuse of corpse.

In a separate proceeding, Judge Landis also ruled that Ahn would be denied bail due to him being charged with a separate felony in Maryland.

Ahn, 31, is accused of abusing the corpse of his mother, 61-year-old Hyun Ahn, of Owings Mills, Md. Police and EMS found the victim’s body inside a vehicle parked outside a residence in the 100 block of Fruitville Pike in Penn Township the afternoon of March 24.

Sgt. Curtis Ochs, a Northern Lancaster County Regional Police officer who entered the vehicle, testified that the victim’s body was covered in “garbage” including miscellaneous boxes, fast food wrappers and a shoe.

An autopsy later determined the victim had died about 30 to 40 hours earlier and had been in the vehicle for about as long, Sgt. Ochs testified.

Detective Theresa Stauffer, who filed the charges, testified that during her investigation she located surveillance footage from outside a Lancaster County business that showed Ahn and the victim inside the vehicle about 48 hours prior to the victim’s body being recovered. The footage showed the victim entering the business while Ahn remained inside the vehicle, Det. Stauffer told the court.

An attorney representing Ahn, while conceding that the victim’s body had remained in the vehicle for many hours, argued that there was “no evidence of abuse.” Rather, the attorney argued, Ahn covered the body out of “respect” and to ask for a funeral. The attorney argued that this display could have been an eccentricity, akin to dressing up a skeleton.

But First Deputy Assistant District Attorney Cody Wade, who will prosecute the case, countered that this was “an exceptionally strange argument.”

Rather, Wade argued, keeping the victim’s body in the vehicle for more than 30 hours would “outrage” an ordinary person’s sensibilities.

Judge Landis agreed, ruling that the Commonwealth had proven a prima facie case.

An investigation into the death of Hyun Ahn is ongoing. Additional charges may be filed. NLCRPD CID is actively working with the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office and law enforcement in Maryland to investigate the event fully.

All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.