A man who was freed from North Korean imprisonment in 2010 after former President Jimmy Carter interceded was found dead in San Diego last week.

The authorities were notified by a witness that the man, Aijalon M. Gomes, 38, had been seen on fire in a field off the Pacific Highway late on Friday.

An off-duty California Highway Patrol officer stopped to help him, and the San Diego Fire Rescue responded to a dispatch call, but Mr. Gomes, who had recently moved to San Diego from Boston, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The San Diego Police said in a statement on Tuesday that they believed Mr. Gomes’s death had been either an accident or a suicide. A police spokesman, Billy Hernandez, said the cause of the fire was still under investigation.