FULLERTON : Man Found Dead at Fumigation Site

A 47-year-old man was found dead Thursday under a fumigation tarp covering an apartment building, apparently overcome by a pesticide.

The body of Roberto Alvarez was found about 9:30 a.m. when workers were removing the tarp that had been draped over the vacant, four-unit building. His body was reportedly lying just outside the locked apartments, but inside the tent and in an area that had been fumigated with methyl bromide.

Family members said Alvarez had not been home since Tuesday night, and they did not know why the man had crawled under the tarp, less than a block away from his home in the 400 block of West Valencia Drive.

The death is the third fatal incident to strike the low-income area of densely clustered apartment buildings in about three months.

Alvarez’s body was found across the street from where 29-year-old Norma Ofiu was gunned down in November by her estranged husband, Lopeti Siliva Ofiu, who later took his own life.

“We are sick and tired of this,” said neighborhood resident Bertha Gonzalez, who watched Thursday with many other residents as authorities removed Alvarez’s body. Gonzalez was also there when police and emergency crews descended on the area shortly after Norma Ofiu was shot.

Alvarez “was so nice,” Gonzalez said. “He liked to wake up early in the morning and play in the yard with the kids. He hugged the kids a lot.”

Jim Wynn, an inspector with the Orange County Department of Agriculture, said methyl bromide is commonly used in pest fumigations and is highly toxic to humans when exposed in closed areas.

“I think the guy was just trying to sleep,” said Simon Barron of Four Fumigators Inc. in Los Angeles.

Officials in the county coroner’s office said an autopsy would be performed today to determine the exact cause of death.

Barron and Carlos Gonzalez, 50, who discovered the body, said they checked every room in the building and found no one Wednesday before covering the structure and proceeding with the fumigation.