This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Police in Canada are investigating after a maintenance worker found the body of a man trapped behind the wall of a women’s toilet in a Calgary shopping mall.

The grim discovery was made on Monday, when the worker removed a wall panel to repair a toilet that wouldn’t flush.

“If you were to look at the toilet, there’s a panel behind it so that when people move it would automatically flush,” a Calgary police spokeswoman, Emma Poole, told reporters. “When they removed that panel, they found a deceased person behind that wall.”



Fire crews and police arrived at the Core mall in Calgary to investigate, taping off sections of the food court on the fourth level of the shopping centre.

Provincial medical examiners removed the body from the scene nearly six hours after the discovery. An autopsy is scheduled for later on Tuesday, a police representative told the Guardian.

Calgary police confirmed the body was an adult male, but have not yet released a cause of death.

“Despite the circumstances of where the body was located, investigators do not suspect foul play and the death remains classified as undetermined,” said police in a statement.

At the moment, the women’s washroom remains an active crime scene.

While there is no clear explanation as to how the body became lodged behind the wall, police confirmed on Monday that officers are examining the ventilation and air duct systems.

Police said they could not yet comment on how long the body had been behind the toilet, pending the results of the autopsy.