BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — The Kern County Sheriff's Office has released the cause of death in the case of a man whose body was found inside a well in Bakersfield.
Back in March Jerome Crystian Jr.'s body was found in a California Water Services well inside a pump house located in 5400 block of Demaret Avenue. The well had been out of service for several months. A worker with Well Rehabilitation Services, Inc., a third-party vendor that works with Cal Water, found the body after lowering a camera 200 feet into the well.
"We honestly don't know a whole lot at this point," said Bakersfield Battalion Chief Brian Bowman at the time. "Don't know how the person got down there. We do know that last week, Tuesday or Wednesday of last week, Cal Water did report a break-in at this facility. That's the reason that the lock had been cut and that's the reason they were doing the inspection prior to putting the well back into service."
According to the KCSO, Crystian Jr. died of mechanical asphyxia. According to the website Medscape, "Mechanical asphyxia involves some physical force or physical abnormality that interferes with the uptake and/or delivery of oxygen. Most mechanical asphyxiants affect breathing or blood flow, the latter usually due to neck vessel or thoracic compression."
The manner of his death remains "undetermined."
At the time of the discovery, the Bakersfield Police Department, authorities were treating the incident as a "suspicious death."
