BURBANK (CNS) - Authorities tried to determine today how the three men whose bodies were found inside a parked SUV in an industrial area of Burbank died and if they are three men missing from the Bakersfield area.
Burbank police responded to a parking enforcement call around 7 a.m. Tuesday about a Jeep SUV parked in the 1300 block of South Varney Street.
``A Burbank police parking control officer arrived and noticed at least one individual inside of a parked vehicle who appeared deceased,'' according to Burbank police Sgt. Derek Green.
Paramedics responded and pronounced three men dead. Reports from the scene indicated that the Jeep was registered to someone in Tennessee.
``This is definitely suspicious and we believe foul play is involved, so it's being treated as a homicide at this time,'' Green told City News Service.
Green said the Burbank Police Department ``is aware of information circulating online regarding missing individuals from the Bakersfield area.''
``At this time, identifications of the deceased have not been made,'' Green said.
The car matched the description of the vehicle in a missing persons flier circulating on social media, the Los Angeles Times reported. The flier says three men heading to Riverside in a Jeep Patriot with Tennessee plates went missing. One post said the men disappeared April 13, the newspaper reported.
It's unclear how the bodies were positioned in the vehicle, though Green told the Times no one was in the driver's seat. Because the area is secluded and close to the freeway, Green said the bodies may have been moved to Burbank.
"If it's, in fact, a body dump, we're going to have a jurisdictional issue to determine who will investigate. There's a lot of work that needs to be done," he told the newspaper.