Bones found near Redding City Hall possibly tied to July find

Scattered bones scooped up Monday by a transient near Redding City Hall are human, say police who believe the remains may be connected to an earlier find one week ago.

It’s up now to coroner’s officials in the Northern California city to determine their age and whether the remains are from one or more people.

The bones were found just before 8 a.m. Monday in a drainage canal a short distance across Cypress Avenue from Redding City Hall and the city’s police and fire departments by a homeless man who gave the remains to security officers.

Shasta County Coroner’s investigators called to the scene confirmed the remains as human, Redding police said in a statement.

Redding police say skeletal remains found a week earlier on July 30 off of Park Marina Drive near the city’s Cypress Avenue Bridge spanning the Sacramento River could be related to Monday’s discovery.

“The remains recovered at that location were not fully intact, and the waterways where both sets of remains were recovered appear to share the same path through the city,” police officials said in the Monday statement.

No duplicate sets of bones have been collected from either location, police said, but Shasta County Coroner’s officials have called on a forensic anthropologist who will examine bones from the July 30 find and Monday’s discovery for any link.

This story was originally published August 6, 2019 at 10:22 AM with the headline "Bones found near Redding City Hall possibly tied to July find."