SANTA PAULA : New Attempt Made to Identify Dead Man

A Santa Barbara anthropologist and a Russian archeologist have collaborated to reconstruct the facial features of a still-unidentified dead man found near Santa Paula in September, 1993.

Pictures of the reconstructed face were released this week by the Ventura County coroner’s office, which commissioned the work in an effort to identify the remains.

Coroner’s office officials said the man was probably 25 to 27 years old and about 5 feet, 6 inches tall. They said he may have lived in a sugar cane-producing area of Mexico before coming to the United States.

His remains were found on the north slope of South Mountain near Santa Paula. He probably died in the summer or fall of 1992, and his injuries were consistent with those a person would suffer from a severe fall from a horse, coroner’s officials said.

The reconstruction was done by Leonid Yablonsky of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow. Yablonsky worked in the laboratory of Prof. Phillip L. Walker of UC Santa Barbara.

Anyone who can help identify the dead man is asked to call the coroner’s office at 652-5750.