A father and son smelled a foul odor coming from a dinosaur papier-mache statue in a suburb of Barcelona on Saturday afternoon. A crack in the stegosaurus’s leg revealed a dead man inside, prompting the father to alert authorities.
A spokeswoman for the Mossos d’Esquadra, the local police, told the news outlet that no foul play is suspected in the case and that it appeared the man got inside the statue headfirst before getting stuck in the leg.
“It’s an accidental death; there was no violence,” she said. “It looks as though he was trying to retrieve a mobile phone, which he’d dropped.”
Authorities are awaiting autopsy reports to determine the cause of death, but the police spokeswoman told the Guardian that the man could have been inside the statue for a couple of days.
🔴 Troben el cos sense vida d'un home dins d'un dinosaure decoratiu dels antics cinemes del Cubics de #SantaColoma de #Gramenet. Un nen i el seu pare, que juguen sovint a la zona, han trobat el cadàver. El pare ha avisat immediatament la policia, que investiga la causa de la mort pic.twitter.com/EIAc3P4Lr1
— El Mirall.net (@elmirallnet) May 22, 2021
Firefighters pried open the dinosaur leg to retrieve the body after three teams were called to the scene, the BBC reported.
The statue, which was used to promote an old cinema, has been removed from its original location, the BBC reported.
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