Vancouver Island found itself embroiled in a mystery case Sunday after a human foot, stuffed inside a black sock and shoe, washed ashore.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Tuesday that the incident began on Sunday when the shoe washed ashore and was later found by a hiker. Noticing that there were about "three inches of white material" inside, the hiker decided to turn it over to the B.C. Coroners Service so they could determine what it was, according to dbtechno.
This story was corroborated by the hikers wife, Charlotte Stephens, who said that her husband had been walking on piles of driftwood that day when he found a running shoe with a sock and what appeared to be human bones.
"All you could see is about three inches of white material, and we were trying to determine if it was actual human bone or just something else placed inside," she said, according to CTV News Vancouver. "It definitely looked like it but we weren't going to take anything out of the shoe to find out."
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of death and who the shoe belongs to, but for the time being, authorities do not suspect foul play, according to Barb McLintock of the British Columbia Coroners Service.
A statement from the B.C. Coroners Service notes that the shoe was first sold in North America in March 2013, meaning that the shoe's owner died sometime between March 2013 and December 2015, reported CNN. With that in mind, McLintock said officials believe the foot separated naturally after prolonged exposure to water before washing up on Botanical Beach where the hiker discovered it.
The grim discovery marks the 13th time that a foot has washed up on the shores of British Columbia since 2007. Authorities have been able to identify 10 of those feet, which belonged to seven individuals.
An official has been quoted saying that most cases were determined to be suicides, though at least one case in both 2008 and 2012 turned out to be a hoax.
