Body Is Found in Park Lake

The body of a 59-year-old Westminster man was pulled from a lake Thursday afternoon at Mile Square Regional Park, where it may have been floating for hours, Orange County sheriff’s officials said.

Residents near the Fountain Valley park said they thought the body was a mannequin when they first saw it, said sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino.

Investigators found no signs of foul play, Amormino said. The man, dressed in a shirt and pants and carrying identification, may have drowned, he said. Officials did not say in which of the park’s two recreational fishing lakes the body was found.

About 2:45 p.m., a neighbor called officials, saying “something, like a dummy,” was drifting in the water, Amormino said.

Other neighbors later told investigators that they had seen what looked like cardboard bobbing in the lake about 10 a.m., Amormino said, though authorities aren’t sure if what they saw was the body.

The man’s name has not been released. Amormino said authorities were checking missing-person reports and license-plate numbers to locate family members.

This is not the first drowning at Mile Square Regional Park. Two years ago, a 2-year-old boy drowned in the south lake after wandering away from a picnic.