A mysterious death has occurred just outside Sofi Stadium, home of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers.
The body of an unknown man was found on July 6 in a lake outside the venue in Inglewood, Calif. near Los Angeles, officials say.
Standing beside local police chief Mark Fronterotta, city mayor James Butts said at a press conference that surveillance video showed an unidentified 45-year-old Hispanic male entering the stadium's parking lot around 6 a.m. that day "by trespassing," adding that he hopped a fence. Butts said minutes later, the venue's security personnel called the police.
"At 6:13, he was last seen entering the lake, moving towards the middle of the man-made lake," the mayor continued. "Two security officers...came to the periphery of the lake after he was spotted on video but by that time he was already in the water."
Butts said that at 6:21, the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Enforcement Bureau and Los Angeles County firefighters were called to the scene. He said the man's body was recovered from the lake around 9:48 a.m. Butt said that by the time the authorities arrived, the person "was not seen and hadn't been seen for quite some time."
The mayor said they do not know why the man was on the property or why he got into the water, adding that "it kind of looks like he didn't know how to swim."
Butts added, "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 could have done to prevent this."
Sofi Stadium, which hosted the Super Bowl this past February, and the 5.5-acre, 15-foot deep artificial lake are part of the Hollywood Park entertainment complex, which said in a statement to USA Today they were aware of the incident when security personnel spotted the "individual trespassing" that morning.
An autopsy has been planned to determine the man's identity and the cause of his death.