A FIFTH human foot in a year has washed ashore in British Columbia, Canada.
The left foot was found floating off Westham Island on Monday morning.
Constable Sharlene Brooks said officials were working with the provincial coroner's office to see if the foot was linked to any other remains recovered in the province.
"A passerby noticed a shoe floating in the water, pulled it in and notified police," PC Brooks said. "We're treating it as a criminal investigation."
She said there was no indication – at present – that the foot was related to the other cases. "But we're certainly not discounting the possibility that this may be linked to the other recovered feet, it's just too premature and very speculative for us to even entertain that right now," she said.
The last foot was found on 22 May on Kirkland Island in the Fraser River, about one mile away from the latest discovery. The first was found nearly a year ago on Jedidiah Island in the Strait of Georgia.
Within days, another right foot was found inside a man's Reebok trainer on Gabriola Island. The third was found in the same area, on the east side of Valdez Island, in early February.
The origin of any of the remains is still unknown. "This might take a long time," PC Brooks said. "This is not CSI."
She said, in order to identify the foot, other remains from the body or identifying material such as DNA would be needed. "It's going to be pretty difficult."
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have said there is no evidence the feet were severed or removed from the legs by force. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer, said that when a body decomposed in water, it was not unusual for it to come apart after prolonged submersion.
