A Long Island school student discovered a human arm on her way to class in Babylon Thursday morning, prompting a search that also turned up a severed leg.
Later in the day, a canine found a second arm, police confirmed Thursday evening.
“So we have a right arm and a left arm,” Suffolk County homicide detective Kevin Beyrer told reporters, though the identity of the person to whom the limbs belonged is not yet known.
“Suffolk County Police Homicide Squad detectives are investigating after a left arm was found on the west side of the road on Siegal Boulevard, between Park Avenue and Mason Avenue, in Babylon at 8:41 a.m.,” Suffolk County Police said in a statement to the Daily News earlier in the day.
“During a subsequent search by police, a canine unit located a leg sticking out of a pile of leaves in a wooded area on Graham Place between Beverly Road and Martin Place,” the statement continued.
Those two limbs were found less than a mile apart, on opposite sides of Babylon’s Southards Pond Park, which was shut down during the investigation. The right arm was later discovered about 20 feet farther into the woods by a cadaver dog that was brought back in once the first arm had been cleared, Beyrer said.
An unidentified girl who was in a group of kids walking to school first came across the left arm and called her father, who then contacted police. ABC News said the arm was tattooed and the hand had missing fingertips. It’s currently unclear whether the appendage belonged to a male or female.
Officers said they didn’t believe those remains were on the roadside long before being discovered.
“Students do come down this block,” Beyrer told reporters after the arm was found. “We’ll check with people to see if it was seen yesterday, but it does appear recent.”
The human leg was reportedly found near an elementary school around 1:30 p.m. That gruesome discovery cut recess short for some students and complicated dismissal plans, according to News12 Long Island.
Detective Beyrer said Thursday evening that a search for any additional body parts or evidence would continue in the morning after it got too dark to look thoroughly.
Beyrer was a lead investigator in the Gilgo Beach serial killer case resulting in four murder charges against Massapequa Park architect Rex Heuermann, who was arrested in July. Heuermann pleaded not guilty to the long-unsolved killings dating back to 2007.
