Unidentified body found floating off the Valencia coast

UNIDENTIFIED body of a man of African origin has been found floating in the waters off the coast of Valencia

The unidentified body of a man was recovered by the Guardia Civil on Saturday morning (July 3), after being reported spotted by fishermen, floating in the waters approximately 16km (10 miles) off the coastline of Valencia.

An investigation has been launched by the police force into the discovery of the body, a man of African origin, to clarify the circumstances surrounding his death, who was first observed in the water by the crew of a fishing boat.

After the call was received by the emergency services, a patrol of the Guardia Civil’s Maritime Service was deployed to the location, where they recovered the man’s lifeless body, which was taken to the port of valencia where preliminary inspections were made, under the supervision of the court on duty.

One hypothesis that the Benemérita is working with is that the middle-aged African man had possibly been a stowaway on a cargo ship, and as it was passing near to land the man could have jumped overboard with the intention of swimming to the Valencian shoreline.

It has not been ruled out that the man could have been the victim of a shipwreck, but this theory is less likely due to the fact that the route of boats to the region rarely exceeds the limits of the province of Alicante, and if that was the case then the body would have washed up many kilometres away by the strong currents.

As the body was in an advanced state of decomposition, the researchers’ suspicion is that he lost his life some time ago, but the date of death can only be established with an autopsy, and now the body has been transferred to the Valencia Institute of Legal Medicine (IML) by personnel of the judicial funeral checkpoint.

As the authorities explained, in these cases there are only two ways to identify the victim: documentation, which rarely appears in cases of irregular immigration, or some element in their belongings that the country of origin can establish in order to request the support of foreign authorities, as reported by lasprovincias.es.

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