The only fatality from last week’s series of earthquakes in California may have been in Nevada, where a man’s body was found pinned under his Jeep after the vehicle fell off its jacks, according to reports.
Deputies with the Nye County Sheriff’s Office found the 56-year-old man Tuesday afternoon under the Jeep in Pahrump, Nevada, some 120 miles northeast of Ridgecrest, the epicenter of the July 4 temblor.
Sgt. Adam Tippetts said the man — whose identity has been withheld pending notification of next of kin — was last seen alive at a local gas station on July 3, the LA Times reported.
The man apparently was working on the Jeep, which had been jacked up before the quake struck.
“The vehicle that the male was pinned under had been jacked up safely and based on the positioning of the body and the tools found at the scene, the male appeared to be working on the vehicle at the time of his death,” Tippets said on Facebook.
“Based on preliminary timing and circumstances at the scene, the Nye County Sheriff’s investigation reveals that this death may be the result of the vehicle falling off the jacks on July 4th during the earthquake,” the sheriff’s office said in a release.
It was not immediately clear whether the man was trapped alive for some time or was killed instantly.
No one was believed to have been seriously hurt in last week’s 6.4-magnitude earthquake or in the following day’s 7.1-magnitude quake.
The 6.4 quake was the largest the area had experienced in 20 years, topped by the 7.1-magnitude temblor, which equaled the Hector Mines earthquake from 1999.