Dead body found at base of Palos Verdes Estates cliffs. It is the second one in two months
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- A body was discovered at the base of the Palos Verdes Estates cliffs Thursday in the same area where a dead man was found in August.
- The striking yet perilous 300-foot bluffs have claimed multiple lives in recent years.
Towering at 300 feet tall, the crumbly ocher cliffs of Palos Verdes Estates boast breathtaking views of Los Angeles’ coastline.
But the jagged rocks below have a deadly history.
On Thursday, a body was found at the base of cliffs in the same area where authorities recovered another dead man just two months ago.
The Palos Verdes Estates Police Department received a call from a person who saw a man lying face down at the base of the cliff close to the 1400 block of Paseo del Mar around 12:19 p.m. Thursday, according to a department spokesperson. Officers and Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedics responded and pronounced the man deceased.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said the body found Saturday had ‘probably been there for months ... it’s in a state of decay.’
The man’s identity and cause of death have not yet been determined, the spokesperson said. There is no foul play suspected.
Exactly two months ago, on Aug. 30, police responded to a nearly identical call.
Shortly before 10 a.m. that day, officers were dispatched after a report of a man lying on the shoreline rocks at the bottom of the cliffs near the 1400 block of Paseo del Mar, the spokesperson said. The man was not immediately identified, and no foul play was suspected.
The L.A. County medical examiner has one record of an Aug. 30 fatality at a cliff — a 47-year-old man named Donald Walker, whose cause of death was ruled accidental due to blunt force injuries. The medical examiner’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment to confirm whether Walker was the man found in Palos Verdes Estates on Aug. 30.
Rescue officials say that a person died after falling approximately 300 feet off the cliff.
In June, authorities linked three sets of human remains found on the Palos Verdes Estates shore to three different missing person cases — a boater lost at sea, a person believed to be homeless and a fisherman who got caught in dangerous weather, according to reporting from KTLA.
On May 23, 2022, four people fell off the cliff near Paseo del Mar around 4:25 a.m. Twenty-five-year-old Jerardo Huitzil died while the other three people survived.
“It’s extremely dangerous; there’s no fencing in the area,” L.A. County Fire Capt. Wade Kelsey said after the 2022 death. “There’s sloping to where it just goes off to a sheer cliff, and the majority of the area here is very unstable, very dangerous if you get close to the edge of this cliff without any sort of protection.”
City News Service contributed to this report.
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