Scene puzzles officers

A man was discovered bleeding profusely on the road next to a parked car in north Costa Mesa early Saturday morning, in a case that has police officers and detectives baffled.

Around 1 a.m., the Costa Mesa Police Department responded to a call from a passerby at Harbor Boulevard and Sunflower Avenue and found a man lying in the middle of the intersection next to an open car door.

According to Lts. Dale Birney and Marty Carver, the man — identified as Manuel Garcia, 35, of Anaheim — had a wound to his lip and was unable to speak, and was taken by paramedics to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana.

The victim’s car, according to Birney and Carver, had blood inside on the floor, roof and seats, and a clean spot on the passenger seat indicated that someone else may have been in the car with Garcia.

Police closed southbound Harbor Boulevard for about an hour and conducted a helicopter search throughout the area, but found no one.

Carver said the case was a complete mystery, and detectives were waiting until Garcia was able to speak again.

“They don’t know what it was,” he said. “He wasn’t talking, and we can’t tell what it was that punctured his lip, whether it was a fist or a tooth going through it. At this point, we don’t have anything until somebody talks to him.”

Police believed all the blood in the car, which included drops running down the exterior on the driver’s side, had come from Garcia.

Carver said, though, he did not believe the wound was life-threatening, and Garcia had been in stable condition the last he heard.

Officials at Western Medical Center confirmed shortly before 6 p.m. that Garcia was in the hospital’s intensive care unit but declined to comment on his condition.

— Michael Miller