A group of high school students in New York made a grisly discovery on their way to school Thursday morning: a human left arm.
The group walked through Southards Park Pond in Babylon Village, Long Island, just 15 miles from Gilgo Beach, the burial place of accused serial killer Rex Heuermann, who operated from 1996 to 2011.
The fingertips were removed and a tattoo was visible, reports said ABC New York. The arm belonged to a biological male. Authorities have not commented on the cause of death as it is believed the tattoo will be part of the investigation.
Suffolk County Police Officer. Lt. Kevin Beyrer told media that one of the teens, a high school student, alerted her father just before 9 a.m., who went to the park, confirmed it was an arm and then called police.
In a subsequent search of the area, a police dog recovered a human leg about a mile away in the same park, near an elementary school, at 1:30 p.m. A right arm was subsequently found after falling approximately six meters in a wooded area overnight.
The park where the body parts were found is popular with children, joggers and people walking their dogs
After the initial gruesome discovery, another body part, this time a leg, was located by a cadaver dog
Officials from nearby schools kept students inside as the investigation continued
The death has been ruled a homicide and detectives have been at the scene throughout the day
The third body part, a right arm, was only found when night fell in the park
“There’s a lot of leaves. We don’t know what will lie under the hill. Once we clear the mound, we might find the rest of the body, or we might not,” Beyrer said.
Officials from nearby schools kept students inside as the investigation continued. According to NBC New York, the area is frequented by joggers, children and dog walkers.
Homicide detectives were reportedly on the scene. The affiliate reports that the body parts were recently left at the scene.
“It’s a little disturbing because the school is here, so I was a little concerned,” local parent Salma Lakhaney told ABC New York.
Another local resident told the station that she no longer walks her dog in the park in question.
‘There is definitely a bad atmosphere here. Like the past two weeks for sure. “I don’t walk here alone anymore because there are only crazy people,” she said.
“That it is terrible and very frightening to hear something like this happening so close to home,” said Josephine Roche, a local resident of Babylon Newsday.
‘I think we’re safe. There is a good police presence and I don’t think this was necessarily related to this area. I told my children, ‘Always lock the doors wherever you are.’
The area is also close to where accused murderer Rex Heuermann, pictured here in February, spent 15 years looking for victims.
The area is also close to where accused murderer Rex Heuermann spent 15 years looking for victims.
Earlier this month, Heuermann was formally charged with the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes, months after he was identified as the prime suspect in her death when he was arrested in July in the deaths of three other women.
In addition, gang violence had been a problem in some communities on Long Island for more than a decade, but local police and the FBI began pouring resources into a crackdown sparked by the murders of high school students Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16. , in 2016.
The most active violent gang is the dreaded MS-13.
The killings in Brentwood, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of New York City, shocked parents and local officials and shined a spotlight on the deepening problem of gang violence in the suburbs.
Police also began discovering the bodies of other young people – mostly Hispanic – who had disappeared months earlier, but whose disappearances had initially gone unnoticed by civic leaders and the news media.
Some parents of the missing complained that police had not done enough to search for their missing children sooner.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Suffolk County Police Department at 631-852-6392 or call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-220-Tips.