A man who was reported missing hours earlier was found dead Saturday inside the leg of a dinosaur statue in a town near Barcelona, Spain, The Guardianreports.
A father and son alerted authorities when they noticed something inside the papier-mâché stegosaurus in Santa Coloma de Gramenet. Officers called upon local firefighters to cut the dinosaur’s leg in an effort to retrieve the body of the 39-year-old man. The police has ruled out foul play, and believes he was trying to get his phone back when he got stuck inside.
“It’s an accidental death; there was no violence,” their statement reads. “This person got inside the statue’s leg and got trapped. It looks as though he was trying to retrieve a mobile phone, which he’d dropped. It looks like he entered the statue head first and couldn’t get out.”
Investigators are awaiting autopsy results that will help them figure out the exact cause of death and determine how long he had been inside the statue. They suspect he could’ve been there for a couple days. Santa Coloma Police told local newspaper El Periodico unidentified man’s family reported him missing after they hadn’t heard from him in two days.
Authorities have floated the possibility that the man was able to get inside the dinosaur by going through a panel located on its underbelly, an entry method that the outlet points out had been used in the past by homeless people. However, nothing has been confirmed yet, as they continue to look into his death.
