LAS VEGAS (AP) — Human remains found last October on the shores of shrinking Lake Mead are those of a North Las Vegas man who drowned in April 1974, officials in Las Vegas said Tuesday.
Donald B. when he reportedly disappeared into the waters of the Colorado River Reservoir behind Hoover Dam. Smith was 39 years old, the Clark County Coroner’s Office said in a statement. was identified through DNA, and her death was ruled accidental.
As the lake recedes due to drought, coroner’s investigators are working to identify other remains found last year, said Stacey Welling, a county spokeswoman. They include people who Las Vegas police say were shot in the head and stuffed in a barrel found in May 2022 near a popular swimming and boating area about a 30-minute drive from the Las Vegas Strip.
Police in Las Vegas and neighboring North Las Vegas and city officials in North Las Vegas said no missing person report or family contact information for Smith, who drowned, was immediately available.
Hers was the last of a series of remains to be publicly announced last year in a lake that has been a fishing, swimming and boating destination for decades — and a dumping ground for the underworld. In the early years of the Las Vegas area.
Remains discovered in May 2022 in the Calville Bay area were identified in August 2022 as those of 42-year-old Las Vegas father Thomas Erndin. His family said he drowned in the lake on a nighttime family boat on August 2, 2002.
Other skeletons were discovered three weeks apart in late July and early August The shoreline at the Boulder Beach swimming area was owned by a man, a coroner’s report said Tuesday. Officials are still trying to attach a name to the remains.
