A Florida man died after a sand dune collapsed on him as he was recording a sunrise from a beach on the Atlantic Coast, a sheriff’s office said Monday.
The 35-year-old man was found dead Sunday on Hutchinson Island by someone who spotted part of his body sticking from the sand, the Martin County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
“Somehow, while he was there, inexplicably, we don’t know why, that beach erosion mountain of sand collapsed on him,” Sheriff William Snyder told NBC affiliate WPTV of West Palm Beach.
The sheriff’s office said in a statement Monday that investigators believe the man was recording the sunrise and resting underneath a sand dune when it collapsed.
The man was known to record sunsets at the beach, the sheriff told WPTV. He was a resident of Stuart, a nearby city, the sheriff's office said.
Investigators think he died hours before he was found.
At least two other people have died this year in incidents involving collapsing sand at dunes or beaches, but those involved people digging into the sand.
A 13-year-old boy died in Utah in May after a tunnel he’d dug into a sand dune at a state park collapsed, and the same month, an 18-year-old died after a hole at a New Jersey beach collapsed.
