Skull is found in wildfire burn area
From wire reports
Posted: 12/25/2009 09:54:22 PM PST
A human skull was found on a hillside in the Angeles National Forest and authorities plan to return to search for more remains, a homicide detective said early Friday.
"Investigators were out there about eight hours," Detective Peter Hecht of the sheriff's Homicide Bureau said. "But they can't dig at night. They need forensic archaeologists and doctors."
The discovery of human remains was made around
5:35 p.m. Thursday on the Angeles Forest Highway near mile marker 19.36, said Deputy Rick Pedroza of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Mile marker 20 is near Lucas Creek, a steep drainage that feeds Big Tujunga Canyon above the Big Tujunga Dam, according to a duty officer at the Crescenta Valley sheriff's station.
"It was a skull, found by a hiker," said Los Angeles County Coroner's Investigator Jerry McKibben. "They're going to go back up there (today) to search."
The hillside where the skull was found is in or near a recently burned part of the forest, McKibben said. The Angeles Forest Highway winds its way through mountain watersheds that sustained severe damage during the Station Fire in August and September.
"Apparently it's part of the burn area, but it sounds like the bones are pre-fire," McKibben said. "Just from the condition of the skull, it sounds like it was skeletonized before the fire. It's definitely a skull, not attached to the body."
