A 27-year-old Tustin man was electrocuted while taking photos of a sunset from a tree in his backyard, authorities said.

It took firefighters about an hour using special equipment to remove the unidentified victim’s body from the tree in the 15600 block of South California Street, said Capt. Steve Concialdi of the Orange County Fire Authority.

Family members, who had spent hours looking for the victim, called the Fire Department about 8:40 a.m. after they made the gruesome discovery, he said. The man was tangled in electrical wire that ran through the tree and was not moving.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Saturday, the man posted a photo of a picturesque sunset on Facebook that had been taken from the tree. Then the man went missing.


Friends and family members tried all night to reach him by phone before going door-to-door asking neighbors if they had seen him. They checked the tree in the backyard that he often would climb. It had a full canopy and enough room to sit or stand. But it was too dark to search the tree from the ground.

On Sunday morning, the family found the man’s phone in the grass next to the tree and that’s when they spotted him still in the tree.

Southern California Edison had to shut off the power of more than two dozen homes in the neighborhood as the man’s body was removed.

“Our hearts go out to the family,” Concialdi said. “It was a very tragic scene.”


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