(Reuters) - Police found a woman's severed head in bushes outside a Long Island home on Thursday in an area where human body parts were discovered scattered last week, authorities said.
Responding to a call from a local homeowner, officers recovered the head from the front yard of a house in the town of Hempstead, said Lieutenant James Hayman of the Hempstead Police Department.
Two severed limbs were found a few blocks apart in Hempstead last week, and a woman's torso turned up in Bay Shore, a community about 25 miles (40 kms) away.
Local media have said detectives suspect the body parts belong to a 27-year-old Brooklyn woman reported missing earlier this month. Police have declined to comment on the reports.
Suffolk County Police said in a statement that homicide detectives from their department and from Nassau County responded to a call regarding a body part in Hempstead on Thursday, without providing any more details.
The statement said the body part was removed to the Nassau County Medical Examiner's office for further examination.
(Reporting by David Jones in Newark, New Jersey; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Ken Wills)
