Body Found In MacArthur Park Lake, Authorities Say No Evidence Of Foul Play

A body was found in MacArthur Park Lake on Wednesday morning but according to authorities, there does not appear to be any evidence of foul play.

LAPD officers received a radio call alerting them of a body in the lake at approximately 10:02 a.m. "When officers arrived, the body was close enough to the edge that an officer pulled the body out of the water," according to LAPD Officer Aareon Jefferson. Jefferson told LAist that the officer performed CPR. Paramedics then arrived and pronounced the individual dead at the scene. Authorities found no evidence of a crime and have turned the investigation over to the coroner's office. The coroner's office confirmed that they were handling the case, but declined to comment further.

The deceased was a hispanic man estimated to be in his 50s, according to Jefferson.

Located in Los Angeles' Westlake neighborhood, the man-made body of water has, as Jesse Katz wrote in Los Angeles Magazine, "a habit of claiming bodies." The first body surfaced in the lake more than 125 years ago in 1890, when Harriet Hutchins drowned in an apparent suicide. According to Katz, seven other people had drowned themselves in the lake by 1900—and for a time in the early days of the city, "whenever anyone went missing in Los Angeles, the first impulse was to check the lake."

Two bodies were found in the lake in 2015, one in December and one in January.