After more than two months, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office has officially identified the mystery man who set himself ablaze in the streets of San Marino as 66-year-old Shin Chang Lee of Rosemead.
The official identification was made at 11:03 a.m. Wednesday morning, according to Edward Winter, assistant chief, Los Angeles County Coroner’s office.
“The autopsy revealed he died of thermal injuries ignited by self with an accelerant,” Winter said during a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon. “We got a hold of his mother in Taiwan. He is Taiwanese.”
Winters said investigators tracked down the mother in Taiwan on May 3 but was unsure as to why it took until today to make the official identification.
“It was a circumstantial identification,” Winters said. “The investigators reviewed the case and determined this was who it was. Everybody knew who it was in the first place, but they had to make it official. I don’t know why it took this long.”
Lee has been stored in plastic since March 26 after he deliberately rammed his small pick-up truck into the car driven by his former employer before committing suicide by setting himself on fire. The former employer was unharmed.
The body has been kept in the morgue’s crypt at a constant temperature of 42 degrees, according to Winter.
“It doesn’t stop the decomposing, but it slows it down,” Winter said during earlier interviews. The body has been in the coroners for the last 66 days because officials could not positively identify him.
That made the situation even more challenging is that nearly everyone knew it was Lee —he was a well-known maintenance worker around town—but because of the body’s advanced decomposition, the official identification has been a challenge.
Although the body has now been officially identified, it still remains unclaimed and could eventually be cremated and buried in a mass grave at the L.A. County Crematory and Cemetery in Boyle Heights. That ceremony buries more than a thousand-unclaimed people, usually around the beginning of December. The burial usually is for those people that have gone unclaimed or unidentified for three years. Last year, 1,495 people were buried in the mass grave.
The Public Administrator will take control of all his belongings and will also try to get his belongings to his family, officials said.
Winter said this particular case has been more challenging than most because of several obstacles, including no family in the country, no known addresses, no dental records, no doctor records and even the Taiwanese consulate has been unsuccessful providing a positive ID. Furthermore, investigators even reached out to a Buddhist temple to no avail.
