A man has died trapped inside a waterslide in Arizona.

Scottsdale Police Department confirmed the 32-year-old died after somehow getting stuck, not in the slide itself, but inside a tube that was part of the support structure.

The body recovery was initially a rescue effort; shortly after midnight Sunday an officer was patrolling about a quarter of a mile from the Eldorado Aquatic & Fitness Center when he heard muffled cries for help, AZFamily reported.

Initially, the officer could not figure out where the cries were coming from; when they eventually discovered where he was at around 1AM, they realized the plastic tube had been “acting almost like a megaphone,” making it extremely difficult to locate him.

Rescuers kept the man talking; but after an hour he stopped responding.

By 3 AM, the rescue mission had shifted to a recovery operation. A crane was brought in to dismantle the slide piece by piece.

Officer Kevin Watts said they did not yet know what the man was doing at the aquatic center, nor how or why he got into the pipe; but to get there he had to scale a fence, climb to the top of the slide’s structure and lower himself inside the pipe

“It wasn’t an easy feat,” Watts said. “It took some work to get down in there.”

The man’s name will not be released until next of kin are informed.