Texans fear there is a serial killer on the loose in their state after a fifth body was found at a lake in the space of six months.
Austin Police Department (APD) chiefs say there is no evidence that Mogga Dogale was killed after his body was retrieved from Lady Bird Lake near Austin last Tuesday. While the APD says his death is not being investigated as a homicide, locals fear there is a killer in their midst.
Mr Dogale is the fifth person to be found dead in the area this year, reports the Mirror. A local bartender has also fuelled fears of a pattern to the deaths.
Locals believe there could be a link to the Rainey Street area of Austin, where some of the men who died had last been seen before being discovered in the reservoir. But the APD has appealed for calm.
In April, the force said: "There is no evidence in any of these cases to suspect foul play. While each incident has occurred at the lake, the circumstances, exact locations, and demographics surrounding these cases vary."
The four men found prior to Mr Dogale were around the same age: Jason John, 30, Cliff Axel, 40, Jonathon Honey, 33 and John Christopher Hays-Clark, 30. Mr John and Mr Honey had been seen on Rainey Street in the hours before they disappeared.
John was found on February 5; Axel on March 5; Honey on April 1 and Hays-Clark on April 15. Two other men, 22-year-old Julio Santos and Martin Gutierrez, 25, were found dead in the lake in 2015 and 2018 respectively.
Locals speculate that the men may have fallen victim to a killer drugging them with drugs such as GHB, commonly known in the US as "roofies".
A local bartender told the US Sun earlier this year that police patrols appear to have been stepped up in the area. The server has disputed the official claims there there is nothing suspicious about the deaths.
She said: "It's an odd place for people to go, too. I find it hard to see how people could leave Rainey, and end up at the lake... You have to walk blocks to get there. The amount of people who have been found dead is huge."
In all, eight people have been found drowned in Lady Bird Lake in the past 10 months after nights out on Rainey Street.
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