Expert Will Compare Pieces of Human Skull

A chunk of a human skull was discovered Wednesday in a local flood control channel and is being compared to another skull fragment found upstream two weeks ago, authorities said.

County workers spraying for mosquitoes Wednesday found the skull piece amid puddles and scrub at the base of the channel west of the 100 block Brea Boulevard and just south of the railroad tracks, Police Det. Mike Carpenter said.

The bone fragment unearthed Wednesday morning is described by Carpenter as “the sinus area and rear of the head” of an adult, while the piece discovered two weeks ago was the crown area of a skull.

The skullcap piece was found in the bed of a dry stream in the Tonner Canyon area several miles north of Brea, authorities said.

A forensic anthropologist will determine whether they are from the same body, a county coroner’s deputy said Wednesday. The experts also will try to deduce age, gender and cause of death, if possible.

The fragment found Wednesday showed no signs of trauma, Carpenter said.

“It apparently was washed there from upstream, but it looked like it had been out there for quite a long time,” Carpenter said. “It was not in the water, it was found in a dry area. The recent rains might have uncovered it.”

Michael Martin, a field technician for Orange County Vector Control, was one of two workers who happened upon the skull fragment while spraying for mosquitoes in the channel’s standing water. Martin lent his knee-high wading boots to police before they rope-climbed down into the steep channel to retrieve the fragment from its muddy perch.

“It was in the moist sand between the rocks,” Martin said. “The channel had about two feet of muddy, algae-filled water, but the skull was out of the water. At first we thought it might be a dog’s skull. But when we picked it up, we knew.”