Authorities in Lodi, California, are investigating the death of a woman who was found with her head trapped in a clothing donation bin, a grim incident that has unfortunately occured across the country with more and more frequency in the recent years.

According to the Lodi Police Department, officers responded to the intersection of North Pacific Avenue and West Elm Street around 6:10 p.m. Monday evening after receiving reports of a person in distress. When the officers arrived they found that the woman was unresponive, with her head lodged inside a metal donation box.

Emergency crews from the Lodi Fire Department were called in and worked to extricate the woman from the bin. She was transported to a local hospital, where she was later pronounced dead. Police have not released her identity but estimate her age to be between 35 and 45 years old. An investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death is ongoing, and officials are urging anyone with information to come forward.

The cause of the entrapment remains unclear—whether the woman had been attempting to retrieve or deposit items, or if she sought shelter inside the bin. Her death, however, is not an isolated incident.

In June, a similar tragedy occurred in Plantation, Florida, when police discovered a person deceased and partially stuck inside a donation bin on West Federated Roadway. That bin, painted pink and marked “clothes & shoes donation center,” had initially drawn attention from a passerby who noticed someone stuck inside. The local police department said the case appeared accidental, but a full investigation was launched.

And in March, authorities in Glens Falls, New York, found the body of a woman after a clothing donation bin caught fire. The victim, later identified as 43-year-old Michelle McFarren, was believed to have been seeking shelter from the cold. Bill Collins, the mayor of Glens, New York, acknowledged that the woman may have been unhoused.

It’s unclear why McFarren was trying to get into the donation bin, but it’s likely that she was looking for shelter.

The Lodi woman’s death now joins a growing list of tragedies involving donation bins—raising renewed questions about public safety, bin design, and how communities address homelessness, poverty, and desperation in increasingly visible ways. For now, police are working to determine what went wrong—and why yet another woman died alone, inside a box meant to hold other people’s cast-offs.