CATALONIA, Spain — Authorities in Spain are investigating the death of a 39-year-old man whose body was found inside a papier-mâché dinosaur statue in a Barcelona suburb on Saturday.
An autopsy is pending, multiple media outlets reported.
A spokesperson for the Mossos d’Esquadra, the regional police force, told The Guardian that the man’s death is not being treated as suspicious because it appeared he intentionally crawled into the hollow leg of the stegosaurus to retrieve a mobile phone.
“It’s an accidental death; there was no violence … It looks like he entered the statue head first and couldn’t get out,” she told the outlet, noting that a father and son noticed something inside the statue through a crack and “raised the alarm.”
Police said that the man had been reported missing by his family and confirmed that three fire brigade teams responded to the scene and cut the statue’s leg open to retrieve the man’s body, BBC News reported.
The decorative statue has since been removed from its perch outside Santa Coloma de Gramenet’s Cubic Building, where it had been used to advertise an old movie theater, BBC News reported.
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