A lifeguard found a man’s body in a barrel at a southern California beach on Monday, after seeing the container floating in the water, officials said.
Homicide detectives with the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department are investigating the circumstances around the death.
The black plastic 55-gallon drum barrel was first found and brought ashore by a state park maintenance worker at Malibu Lagoon state beach on Sunday afternoon, but the remains were not discovered until Monday.
“They got in a kayak and went out to get it, brought it to shore,” Lt Hugo Reynaga with the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department said to reporters at a news conference on Monday. “Apparently it was too heavy and they didn’t want to open it and they left it on shore.”
The barrel was eventually swept back into the water, where a lifeguard spotted it the next morning and brought it to shore. The lifeguard opened it and discovered the body, which was that of a Black man who appeared to be in his 30s, Reynaga told the Guardian. It is still unclear where the barrel came from but officials have speculated that it could have arrived with the tide.
“At about 8pm, there’s a high tide here and there’s a possibility that the container could have come in from the ocean and then got stuck in the lagoon – but we don’t know,” Reynaga said.
The department knows how the man died but is withholding that information until the man is identified and next of kin is notified. The body is currently with the county coroner.
The body did not appear to be decomposed.
Jefferson Wagner, the former Malibu mayor, told the Los Angeles Times that he had seen the barrel in the water over the weekend. He suspected it contained toxic waste.
“This is not what happens in Malibu,” Wagner said. “This is not a common occurrence.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
