Another severed foot found on Vancouver/Washington coast

Vintage plastic foot charms, via The Girl Can't Help It

Yet another human foot was found on a beach along the coastal waterway near Vancouver, BC and Washington state. This is the ninth mystery foot to turn up in the region in three years. From the Vancouver Sun:

The detached right foot – likely belonging to a woman or child, based on the size – washed up on Whidbey Island Friday just before 11:30 a.m., according to Det. Ed Wallace of the Island County Sheriff's office.

Because of the island's position in the Strait of Georgia, it's not unusual for bodies, torsos, legs and arms to wash ashore, he said.

"Ninth human foot found washed up on West Coast"

Previous severed foot action on BB...

• [groovehouse]

  “Harry, she’s wrapped in plastic…”

  • [Anonymous]

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQmm-uoIWnY

• [Anonymous]

  Due to tidal current patterns, limbs/bodies that become seaborne throughout a wide swath of the Pacific can end up on beaches here.

• [Anonymous]

  It’s like Jack Ketchem’s Off Season/Offspring just on the wrong coast.

• [Ted8305]

  Most of these feet were found inside athletic shoes. A dead body usually, but once it decomposes enough the shoes will float the severed feet back to the surface.

  1: Foot in a Campus brand shoe.
  2: Foot in a Reebok.
  3: Foot in a Nike.
  4: Foot a New Balance.
  5: no shoe info
  6: Foot in a Everest brand athletic shoe.
  7: no shoe info
  8: Foot in a Nike.
  9: Foot in a Nike.

  Nike is dominating this particular market.

  • [Ted8305]

    A dead body usually *sinks*, that is. I accidentally my verb.

  • [Phikus]

    Maybe something in the shoes is telling a serial killer Just do it!

• [Walt Guyll]

  There is a lot of coast up there and bodies do end up the the water. It’s not unusual for hands and feet to detach as limbs decompose; feet last longer as they have the smaller surface area. Shoes, of course, extend the persistence of feet.

• [Anonymous]

  Dexter, anyone?

• [Anonymous]

  Actually Whidbey Island is not only in the US, it’s not in the Strait of Georgia. It’s in the Puget Sound and therefore isn’t on the coast either.

• [cjp]

  The feet aren’t anything all that out of the ordinary. Postmortem disarticulation happens and when a foot is in a shoe, that floats. No big mystery. In fourth year forensics I got handed a foot in a rubber boot to investigate. That was in BC, too, way back in ’90.

• [Anonymous]

  At least it makes a good stocking stuffer.

• [MrsBug]

  Well, maybe these feet are just swimming to their winter breeding grounds or something.

• [aldasin]

  1. people die every day, sometimes in close proximity to water
  2. shoes float

  I’m trying to figure out what could be mysterious about this.

• [igpajo]

  I keep wondering if it has anything to do with where all the socks go when they disappear from my laundry.

  Or it could have something to do with our current Governor’s belief that a failure to raise taxes will lead to more amputations of feet.

• [Nadreck]

  It’s been said before but it can’t be said enough:
  Clearly the work of an Arch Fiend!

• [Noodlehead]

  I want to see a left foot wash up in Vancouver and a right foot wash up in Newfoundland.

• [Giant Mustache]

  Funny Bones… Blackpool, England

• [jacob_ewing]

  Dem bones, dem bones, dem
  wet bones.
  Dem bones, dem bones, dem
  wet bones.
  Dem bones, dem bones, dem
  wet bones.
  Now here they are washed ashore.

  Foot not connected to the
  leg bone.
  Leg not connected to the
  knee bone.
  Knee not connected to the
  thigh bone.
  Now here they are washed ashore.

  …

• [Anonymous]

  The moral of the story… don’t wear athletic shoes in that area and you’ll be just fine.

• [Rich Keller]

  This just might solve the need for that hoax restaurant’s need for volunteers posted last week. If suppliers can fly king crab in from Alaska, why not feet from Vancouver?

  http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/27/cannibal-restaurant.html

• [Anonymous]

  After watching the first episode of “William Shatner’s Weird or What?” in which the severed feet were the subject of the final story of the show, I have formed a theory: Asian gang members in Vancouver have committed multiple homicides, then dumped the victims’ bodies in the Fraser, somewhere in the interior. When the bodies decomposed, the feet disarticulated. The rubber-soled running shoes floated to the surface, and the feet were subsequently deposited along the beaches near the mouth of the Fraser.

• [Anonymous]

  @Ted8305 Dead bodies first sink, then they float to the surface once they decompose a bit. A friend of mine fishing for salmon near Chilliwack encountered a dead body 2-3 weeks ago that had been sunk for a week and was floating in the river.

  There are many dead bodies due to the remoteness of the area. There are float plane crashes, fishing vessels that flip/sink, people washed down the Fraser, as well as a plethora of extremely remote islands. Plus the fact that the shoe prevents animals from speeding up the decomposition process on the foot, it’s really not surprising that feet are washing ashore in the Salish Sea.

  • [Anonymous]

    It depends on if the water is salt water or fresh water.

• [rhinny]

  One of the theories that’s talked about a lot around here (Vancouver) is that this is a completely normal occurrence. This string of feet is only being noticed because that first person took a closer look at one shoe and now anyone seeing a beach shoe is definitely checking for feety bits. So many people go missing on the water that it more than accounts for the number.

  If someone looked inside every lone shoe on every beach everywhere, I’m sure we’d find that this isn’t a regional phenomenon.

  (Last Halloween I dressed as a BC beach and hung a running shoe around my neck with a plasticine leg-stump poking out of it.)

• [Anonymous]

  Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch…
  Daylight come and me wan go home!

• [uricacid]

  times like these I realize how naive I am.
  because all the comments saying “people die all the time in the water, this is totally normal” and all I kept thinking was you mean this many people die — unaccounted for?

  in my little fantasy world, nobody dies without having someone question their whereabouts. so there’d be a hypothetical list of people who disappeared that could be verified against the feet. DNA testing of relatives, something like that, for instance.

  the thought that a large number of people a.) disappear, b.) die while disappeared, and c.) have no one to claim them is not surprising but totally sad.

• [rgsteele]

  Not to be pedantic, but…

  First of all, you’ve made a rather glaring typo in the headline. Second, Whidbey Island is in the US, not Canada.

• [Anonymous]

  So, we’re dealing with a suicide, murder or amputation. This is funny?

  Up next, a shocking story about insensitive people.

  • [user23]

    surely you’ve heard of the lulz to be derived from Schadenfreude, no?

• [xy9ine]

  servered food. eww.

  ‘Form the Vancouver Sun’? who’s proofing around here?

• [Anonymous]

  For those who wonder at the mystery,pause to imagine that it is the foot of someone you care about and now imagine no one cares to inquire about the owner.
  That O.K with you?

• [cheesebubble]

  “Another Severed FOOT”

• [coverandwait]

  Maybe it wasn’t a typo.

• [David Pescovitz]

  OK, fixed. Thank you all for your careful attention. I hope I never let you down again.

• [flatfive]

  “Because of the island’s position in the Strait of Georgia, it’s not unusual for bodies, torsos, legs and arms to wash ashore, he said.”

  Because the Strait of Georgia is some sort of severed body part causeway, or what? That quote doesn’t ‘splain much taken out of context.

• [user23]

  anyone notice this statement by the sheriff?

  “Because of the island’s position in the Strait of Georgia, it’s not unusual for bodies, torsos, legs and arms to wash ashore”

  -it’s not unusual for bodies…

  ¿Not unusual? What kind of murderous hell-hole is that place?

  • [Stooge]

    It’s not unusual, it happens every day,
    No matter what you say
    You’ll find it happens all the time

• [Takhys]

  I know it’s along the other coast, but I feel the need to make some sort of Cabot Cove joke.

  • [mdh]

    not at all. “Cabot Cove” is actually Mendocino, CA.

    dun dun dunnnnnn

    strange things are afoot.

• [frankieboy]

  Det. Ed Wallace says “not unusual for bodies, torsos, legs and arms to wash ashore” WTF? oh yeah, another day at the beach.
  I think they’re going to find it’s some funeral director or morgue technician with a weird sense of humor. They could get a foot “fer a laff” and dispose of the body in the course of their work with none the wiser. “Hey, remember all those limbs floating around? That was me! I would have had them all really cranked up if that dope Ed Wallace didn’t convince them it was all normal like”.

• [James]

  All I know is: Bree and Diego need to be a *lot* more careful.

  Then again, it’s probably just Raoul’s gang.

  Idiots.