Police in Catalonia were faced with one of the strangest cases of accidental deaths in recent years when they got a report from a father and son back in 2021.
The duo were walking on a Saturday afternoon when they passed a papier-mache stegosaurus statue placed outside a building in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a suburb of Barcelona.
They soon noticed a foul smell coming from the piece and went to take a closer look, only to find a body through a crack in the statue’s hollow leg.
Those were the mortal remains of a 39-year-old man, discovered by the regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, who recovered the body from inside the statue.
View 3 ImagesThe accident happened in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a suburb of Barcelona(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
A spokesperson for the authorities explained the man appeared to have climbed into the dinosaur’s leg – entering headfirst – while trying to retrieve a mobile phone he’d dropped, and had then become trapped, unable to work his way back out.
“It’s an accidental death; there was no violence,” she said at the time.
“This person got inside the statue’s leg and got trapped. It looks as though he was trying to retrieve a mobile phone, which he’d dropped. It looks like he entered the statue headfirst and couldn’t get out.”
The inside of the statue was such a tight fit that three fire brigade teams were called to the scene and were forced to cut open the leg of the stegosaurus replica.
View 3 ImagesThe man’s body had to be retrieved by three fire brigade teams(Image: Europa Press via Getty Images)
According to local reports at the time, the man had been reported missing by his family only hours before his body was discovered, but police believed he had likely been trapped for a couple of days, and had not been able to confirm precisely how he’d ended up stuck upside down in the first place.
Several Spanish news outlets, including El País and La Vanguardia, reported on the case at the time, noting that the incident was widely discussed in the local community and covered by both regional and national media because of its unusual nature.
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The statue was displayed outside the city’s Cubic Building, installed as decorative signage advertising an old cinema. Santa Coloma de Gramenet’s city council confirmed the statue’s removal in official statements following the discovery.