Global Courant 2023-04-27 05:09:26
Human remains found in Nevada’s subsiding Lake Mead have been identified as those of a 52-year-old man who disappeared in 1998, Clark County said in a statement Wednesday.
The skeletal remains were identified by the county medical examiner’s office as Claude Russell Pensinger of Las Vegas, it said.
The remains were found on three different dates — July 25, August 6 and August 16 — but all belonged to him, the agency said. They were found on the shoreline of Boulder Beach, Nevada the size of the huge reservoir north of Hoover Dam.
A cause of death for Pensinger has not been determined, Clark County said in the statement.
An article in the July 20, 1998 Las Vegas Review-Journal stated that Pensinger was fishing when he disappeared from his boatwho was found in circles, the newspaper reported Wednesday.
As the water level at Lake Mead dropped, a number of human remains were found, including a series of discoveries that began in May last year.
One of them has been labeled an obvious homicide by officials — a person who was fatally shot and whose remains were found in a 50-gallon drum in Hemenway Harbor.
The remains of another person, Donald P. Smith of North Las Vegas, were found on October 17 and 19. Smith drowned in an accident in 1974, the medical examiner’s office determined.
The remains of Thomas Erndt of Las Vegas were found on May 7. He was reported to have drowned in the lake in 2002, although the cause and manner of death have remained undetermined.
When it’s “full pool,” Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States.
The level has fallen after a drought of more than 20 years. The Department of the Interior said this month there is potential for “unprecedented water shortages” in the Colorado River basin.
Lake Mead was created by the construction of the Hoover Dam, which was completed in 1935. It is fed almost entirely by the Colorado River, although it accounts for 3% of its inflow, according to other sources. the National Park Service.
