Inglewood Mayor James Butts said Wednesday, “We don’t know why he got in the water.”
A body was recovered from an artificial lake outside of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., on Wednesday, authorities confirmed.
An unidentified man entered the parking lot at 6:01 a.m. PT, and security called the police minutes later, Inglewood Mayor James Butts said at Wednesday’s news conference. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Special Enforcement Bureau and L.A. County firefighters were called 20 minutes after the person was seen entering the parking lot.
The man was seen walking into the water at roughly 6:13 a.m., and his body was recovered more than three hours later, according to Butts.
“We don’t know why he was on the property and we do not have him identified,” the mayor said. “They have plenty of surveillance video. … We don’t know why he got in the water.”
Butts said two security officers did go to the lake when they spotted the man on the surveillance video; however, the individual was in the water by the time they got there.
“Honestly, this is someone who made a conscious decision to trespass on the property, get into the lake, and he ended up having some distress and difficulty,” Butts said. “So I don’t think there’s anything that SoFi could have done to prevent this.”
This is not the first death at the stadium. In June 2020, a subcontractor fell and died, and a construction worker died a month later from “cocaine intoxication” and heat exhaustion, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In December of the same year, a construction worker died after being pinned by a metal beam during an accident with a crane.