Unidentified Body Found at State Beach

The body of a man believed to be between 50 and 60 years old was found Wednesday morning on a mattress on the south end of Emma Wood State Beach in Ventura, police said.

The unidentified man was spotted by walkers about 7:42 a.m. It appeared he had died about three days earlier from natural causes, the county medical examiner’s office said.

Several people said the man had been living on the beach for about six months, Ventura Police Capt. Ken Warren said. The man was carrying only a few dollars, Warren said.

An attempt to identify the man through fingerprints was unsuccessful, coroner’s investigator Craig Stevens said. Community groups that help transients will be contacted for help today, he said.

An official cause of death was pending the results of toxicological tests.

The man was 5 feet, 10 inches tall and 190 pounds with a full head of gray hair and a full beard, Warren said.

The man’s body was the second found on a Ventura beach in recent months. On May 5, walkers found Dennis Michael Ziegler in a thick clump of reeds in a transient camp near Surfers Knoll. Ziegler, 57, had died about a week earlier from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.