SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- A male hiker from the U.S. state of Minnesota was struck and killed by a huge falling redwood tree at a national park near San Francisco on the Christmas eve, police said Thursday.
The Marin County Sheriff's Office identified the victim as 28-year-old Subhradeep Dutta from the Minneapolis suburb of Edina.
He was killed while walking on a marked dirt trail with two friends, when the huge tree collapsed in the Muir Woods National Monument Park about 24 km north of San Francisco, local media reported.
Dutta "sustained severe traumatic injuries and his death was pronounced on the scene" about half an hour later, the police said, adding a forensic post-mortem examination will be conducted on Friday to determine "the cause and manner of death."
Charles Strickfaden, a spokesman for the National Park Service, told local daily San Francisco Chronicle that it's not known what caused the tree to topple over.
"This is a very rare, and isolated, event that may have occurred due to wet ground from recent winter storms, around the roots of the tree," he said.
The tree measured about 200 feet (61 meters) tall and five feet (1.5 meters) in diameter, and the park was visited by about 1 million people every year, said the newspaper.
