More human remains found at Lake Mead, a week after body discovered in barrel

More human remains have been found in Nevada’s Lake Mead just under a week after a decomposed body in a barrel was found in the drought-stricken reservoir.

A witness discovered the skeletal remains at Callville Bay in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and reported it to park rangers at around 2 p.m. on Saturday.

In a press release, the National Park Service said an investigation is ongoing and that the Clark County medical examiner is looking into the cause of death.

The remains were found just six days after a body of a man who was shot dead was found in a barrel along the shoreline of Lake Mead.

Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that, based on the shoes that were on the skeletal remains, they believe the killing likely happened sometime between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s.

Spencer told CNN the barrel, which was found on May 1, would have been dropped hundreds of metres offshore, likely from a boat, but because the lake has receded so much in that time, that area is now considered shoreline.

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“I would say there is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” he said at the time.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream are the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S., part of a system that provides water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming and across the southern border in Mexico.

The lake’s water level on Monday was the lowest level on record for Lake Mead since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s, at around 1,052 feet about sea level.

The water level has dropped so much that the uppermost water intake valve at Lake Mead became visible last week.

— with files from Global News’ Michelle Butterfield