The discovery was made at the home of reigning Super Bowl champions the Los Angeles Rams
An investigation has been launched after the body of a man was found in the artificial lake in front of the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California where the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers play their NFL home games.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts said that the 45-year-old male jumped over a series of locked fences to access the 300-acre stretch of land known as Hollywood Park where the stadium is located.
The man, whose name has not been released, was last seen above water at around 6:13 am.
Hollywood Park released a statement where it said it was aware of the incident, with security personnel spotting a trespasser at around 6 am.
Divers from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s Special Enforcement Bureau assisted the Inglewood Police Department in finding the body, which was recovered at around 9:40 am according to Butts.
“Honestly, this is someone that made a conscious decision to trespass onto the property, get into the lake and he ended up having some distress and difficulty. So I don’t think there’s anything that SoFi (Stadium) could have done to prevent this,” Butts claimed.
The exact cause of death is still undetermined while an autopsy is being carried out, and authorities are unsure why the man went into the lake officially referred to as Lake Park.
Butts explained how surveillance video footage showed that it “kind of” appeared as though the man “didn’t know how to swim.”
Lake Park spans six acres and can hold 11 million gallons of water, it is said, while also being about 15 feet deep.
The man’s passing is the first known death to have occurred in the lake itself, though it is not the first to have happened in the vicinity of the 70,000 capacity stadium which recently hosted Super Bowl 56 won by the Rams against the Cincinnati Bengals.
In June 2020, a subcontractor fell to his death due to “cocaine intoxication” and heat exhaustion, and December that year saw a construction worker pinned by a metal beam in an accident also involving a crane.
The So-Fi stadium additionally provided the setting of at least two mass brawls last year involving fans of both the Chargers and the Rams in a preseason tie plus Chargers and Dallas Cowboys supporters in the regular season.
