Human Skeletal Remains Found In Unused UC Berkeley Building: Police

A human skeleton was discovered inside an unused building on a University of California, Berkeley, campus earlier this week, authorities said.

The remains were found Tuesday inside a building located at the Clark Kerr Campus, a residential hall complex and event space about a mile southeast of the main campus, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing UC Berkeley police.

The building had not been occupied for "many years," police said. It is unclear how long the remains had been there.

The cause of death will be determined by the Alameda County Coroner's Office. The sex and age of the person have not been released.

The university's police department said in a statement that there are no outstanding cases of missing persons from the Berkeley campus community.

"There are no outstanding cases of missing individuals from the campus community," police said Friday. "We do not anticipate this investigation will disrupt resident activities at the Clark Kerr Campus."

"We understand that there are many questions and we anticipate that the coroner's report will provide additional information," the police department added, according to the Los Angeles Times.

A campus alert was put out to students Friday. The university said that it was ready to offer any help to students feeling distressed due to the news.

"We saw a lot of police activity. There was a construction site. They were like demo-ing everything out of this building, and all of a sudden just stopped. The next day, we saw the coroner come. A lot of police activity. It surprised me that much," an unidentified man who was working in the area when the body was discovered told Fox's KTVU.

He continued, "There's a lot of homeless activity here, so it was an abandoned building, so [I] figured probably something like that happened."

This comes not long after skeletal remains were found in a remote desert area in Buckeye, Arizona, at around 1 p.m. on Jan. 7, according to Buckeye police. The remains were discovered by Penny Buffington, who admitted to 12 News that she initially did not recognize what they were until she got closer.

"It was absolutely freaky," Buffington said. "It was not a pleasant [sight]."

Buffington then noticed more remains nearby along with clothes scattered along the trail.

As she was trying to figure out who the skeletal remains may belong to, she admitted that the name Daniel Robinson came to mind.

Robinson is a 25-year-old geologist who worked in Buckeye and was last seen on June 23, 2021. His car was found days later abandoned in a ravine, and several massive searches were conducted all over the area.

Buffington was one of the volunteers in those searches. After calling 911, she also called Robinson's father, David.

Robinson's father later posted a tweet stating that the human remains do not belong to Daniel.

"The human remains found Saturday in Buckeye is not my son. Per, Buckeye PD and the Maricopa Medical Examiners office," David tweeted.