Missing man found dead – trapped in huge dinosaur statue | World | News
He was never identified to the public (Image: Getty)
A 39-year-old man met a tragic and untimely end, leaving his relatives desperately seeking him for multiple days, in an unusual fatality that was determined to be a terrible accident.
It is believed the man was trying to retrieve his mobile telephone when he became trapped inside a giant dinosaur sculpture.
Initial investigations by police suggested he was trying to locate his phone, but when his body was first discovered, multiple questions remained unresolved.
In the satellite town of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, near Barcelona, officers were called to the scene after a father and son reported spotting something within the sculpture.
The structure, a papier-mâché stegosaurus, was found to contain the man’s body in May 2021, reports the Daily Star.
Flowers are placed near a large statue of a dinosaur (Image: LLUIS GENE, AFP via Getty Images)
Despite the remarkable circumstances surrounding the incident, the regional police force did not consider the man’s death as suspicious, but rather as a tragic accident.
A spokesperson for the Mossos d’Esquadra, the regional police force, said: “A father and son noticed that there was something inside and raised the alarm,” as reported by The Guardian.
She added: “We found the body of a man inside the leg of this dinosaur statue. It’s an accidental death; there was no violence. This person got inside the statue’s leg and got trapped.”
The officer proceeded to explain that they believe the man was attempting to recover his phone, which he had dropped, and entered the sculpture head-first.
The man died trapped in the dinosaur (Image: LLUIS GENE, AFP via Getty Images)
Tragically, it was only afterwards that he realised he was unable to free himself from the dinosaur.
Emergency crews were promptly summoned to release the man from inside the dinosaur’s leg. Evidence at the time suggested that the unfortunate man had been trapped within the statue for several days.
Local media reports from 2021 reveal that his family had reported him missing just hours before his body was sadly discovered.
Following this tragic find, the stegosaurus statue was removed from its location in Santa Coloma de Gramenet.
Originally, the statue had been installed as a promotional feature for a nearby cinema. Although the cinema had long since closed and been boarded up, the dinosaur continued to stand outside the city’s Cubic building.
This is not the first instance of an adult male becoming trapped inside a sculpture, though others have been considerably more fortunate.
A 26-year-old man attempting to scale the renowned Talus Dome sculpture in Canada, comprising 1,000 metal spheres, required rescuing by fire crews.
He slipped through a gap in the structure and became wedged. It was only thanks to an alert passer-by notifying the emergency services that he was located, and specialist rescue equipment was needed to free him.
