A human skeleton was discovered in an unused building on the University of California’s Berkeley campus, officials said.
According to the UC Berkeley police, the skeletal remains were discovered on Tuesday in an unused building on the Clark Kerr Campus, a residential hall complex and event space about a mile southeast from the main campus.
Police said that the building had not been occupied for “many years”.
Local reports said that the remains were “skeletonised” and that it was not clear for how many years the remains have been there.
Officials said the remains were found at Building 21 on 2601 Warring Street, just southeast of the main campus.
There are no outstanding cases of missing persons from the Berkeley campus community, the statement by police said. “We do not anticipate this investigation will disrupt resident activities at the Clark Kerr Campus.”
Meanwhile, a campus alert was put out to students on Friday. The university said that it was ready to offer any help to students feeling distressed due to the news.
Alameda County Coroner’s Office will determine the cause of death. Police said that the cause of death will be determined through an autopsy.
“We saw a lot of police activity. There was a construction site. They were like demo-ing everything out of this building and all of a sudden just stopped. The next day we saw the coroner come,” an unidentified man who was working in the area when the body was discovered, told Fox’s KTVU.
“A lot of police activity. It surprised me that much. There’s a lot of homeless activity here, so it was an abandoned building, so figured probably something like that happened.”
The university is about 10 miles (16.09 kilometres) from downtown San Francisco.
With inputs from agencies.