Missing man found dead, buried INSIDE a dinosaur statue in Barcelona

The dead man was found stuck inside the enormous dinosaur prop, previously used to advertise a film theatre. Police are still looking into the exact cause of his death.

A body right under everyone's noses

The man was first found by a father and his son who were playing near the almost derelict statue, in the southeastern Barcelona suburb of Santa Coloma de Gramenet. They were first alerted by the noxious smell that the corpse had began emanating. When they investigated further, the father saw the body through a crack in the statue, which prompted him to call the authorities.

The dead person turned out to be a local 39-year-old man, who had been reported missing by his family just hours before his body was found. Local news managed to catch on camera the moment when firefighters cut open the statue in order to extract the victim's body.

By all accounts, a freak accident

The bizarre affair has been acknowledged by the authorities, with the Catalan police telling local RAC1 radio they believed the death to be accidental. A spokeswoman for the regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, said there is no suspicion of foul play.

Everything indicates it was an accidental death.

Indeed, the police suspect the man had entered the massive art piece to sleep there or to try to retrieve something, such as his mobile phone, and became stuck inside the structure.

It remains unclear how the man managed to get inside the statue by himself. The dinosaur prop appears to be in a poor state, having shed pieces of its 'skin,' as well as one of its jaws, and being adorned with a spray-painted penis. And yet it had not had any visible openings large enough to get in before the accident. The most likely possibility is that he managed to remove a slab from the structure so he could slither inside.