Receding waters of lake uncover a body

The remains of a person who died an estimated 40 years ago were discovered over the weekend in a corroding barrel at Nevada’s Lake Mead as a severe drought has caused the water levels to reach record lows, authorities said.

The remains were found Sunday near Las Vegas at the largest reservoir in the United States, police said. Las Vegas Metro police homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said investigators think the person was a murder victim who died of a gunshot wound. He told CBS affiliate KLAS-TV that there will probably be more such discoveries.

“There is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” he said.

A bystander, Shawna Hollister, told KLAS-TV that she and her husband heard a woman scream Sunday afternoon on the beach near the Hemenway Harbor boat ramp, and her husband went to see what was wrong. “Then he realized there was a body there in a barrel,” Hollister told the news station.

Hollister added it was “heartbreaking to see that somebody’s loved one is out there.”

Photos show a badly corroded 50-gallon drum stuck in the wet sand near the water.

Authorities think the person was killed in the late 1970s or early 1980s, based on clothing and footwear found with the body, according to a statement provided to The Washington Post.

Investigators are working to identify the victim, though Spencer told KLAS-TV it is “going to take an extensive amount of work.” He said police plan to reach out to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to help determine when the barrel might have started corroding. Once an identification has been made, the information will be released by the Clark County Coroner’s Office, police said in the statement.

Lake Mead, a reservoir formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, has been steadily receding since the early 2000s, The Post previously reported. Water levels have recently hit the lowest in recorded history.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the reservoir is at top capacity when water levels reach 1,229 feet above sea level, but it is considered full at 1,219.6 feet. In summer 2021, The Post reported that water levels had dropped to an all-time minimum of 1,071.44 feet. As of Tuesday, it was about 1,054 feet above sea level.

Spencer, with Las Vegas Metro police, told CNN that when the barrel containing the body was dropped into Lake Mead, the site was probably hundreds of yards from the beach, “but that area is now considered the shoreline.”