A man's body has been found behind a wall in a Canadian shopping centre after he got stuck while attempting to climb into the women's toilets.
Police in Calgary, Alberta, are investigating the CORE Shopping Centre after a corpse was discovered on Monday morning when workmen were called in to fix a broken toilet in the women's restrooms.
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"If you were to look at the toilet, there's a panel behind it so that when people move it would automatically flush," police spokeswoman Emma Poole told the Calgary Herald.
"When they removed that panel, they found a deceased person behind that wall."
The body is thought to have been that of a man who attempted to crawl through the ventilation system. It belongs to a man in his 20s, who authorities say may have crawled on top of a pony wall on Friday evening and then into a ventilation shaft, where he got stuck and died.
Police have said that there is no suspicion of foul play and that the body is currently undergoing an autopsy. Because the death is accidental, police will not be releasing further details about the incident.
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"That would be the most logical at this point, is that it was from above," said Poole.
"So that is obviously something they would be looking at, someone crawling through the ventilation system."
The toilets are located near the food court of the shopping centre, which remained open until two hours before the body was removed.
"The security guards cleared out the men's washroom and then their boss came over, the manager or whatever, and said 'no, it's just the women's washroom.' So I was allowed to go back in and finish my business," Ted Peltrow told the newspaper, having been at the shopping centre when the maintenance men were called in on Monday.
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"A couple workmen came in, checking the walls to see if there was any hollow points. I could hear the banging. I was in the stall and I could hear them banging."
According to police, the pony wall that the man climbed behind is used to hide utilities. It stands at more than two metres high and is not linked directly to the ceiling, so it is certainly possible that the man would have been able to get up it and then down the other side, whereupon he became stuck.
CORE shopping centre spokesman Ricky Zayshley told the Herald that the employee who found the body has been offered counselling services, and has been given time off 'to deal with whatever he may be going through'.
"Obviously, the Core is trying to do anything it can to help," said Zayshley.
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