Volunteers cleaning a California lake on Halloween found a murdered man’s body crammed into a discarded suitcase.
Volunteer Kevin Shomo told KTVU that they used small nets to pull in the suitcase they saw on the edge of Oakland’s Lake Merritt around 11 a.m. during a routine Tuesday cleanup.
“We grabbed one end and we realized it was too heavy. So we pulled it close enough to us and we said, ‘Oh wow, this thing is heavy,'” he recalled.
“So we unzipped it … and that’s what we found,” he said of the gruesome discovery of a man stuffed inside “kind of like in a fetal position.”
“I was surprised it was a body in there,” Shomo said of the unidentified victim, who appeared to be in his 30s.
Oakland police Capt. Alan Yu confirmed the discovery, saying it was unclear when the suitcase was dumped.
“Part of the investigation is trying to determine where the body was could have floated from,” Yu told KTVU. “It could be any part of the lake, and we’re looking at all those possible outcomes.”
Police also confirmed to CBS News that it was being investigated as a homicide, with the victim’s identity withheld pending family notification. It was initially unclear if the murdered man matched anyone reported as a missing person, the reports said.
Local residents were alarmed by the discovery at a spot deemed a local oasis with a popular path for runners.
“It’s really scary for me, for a body to be around the neighborhood here, it’s really scary,” witness Angela Massella told KTVU.
Local resident Gerlen Polk was similarly troubled by the crime scene, which her husband told her about after seeing it on the news just as she arrived for her regular walk there.
“A body in the lake?” she said. “What the hell.”