A group of teenagers walking to school stumbled upon a human's left arm at a Long Island park Thursday, according to police, and a dog later found a leg about a mile away.
Cops were called to the scene at Southards Park Pond, off Siegel Boulevard in Babylon Village, shortly before 9 a.m. when a parent of the students who found the arm called 911. That came after the teens spotted a person's left arm dumped in the bushes.
"One of the students called their father. The father responded, confirmed it was an arm on the side of the road and he called 911," Suffolk County Police Det. Lt. Kevin Beyrer said at a news conference.
A short time later in the early afternoon, a police dog searching another part of the large park found a human leg under leaves about a mile from the first location — and not far from a nearby elementary school. Later in the evening, a right arm was found as well, about 20 feet further into the woods from where the first arm was discovered in the morning, police said.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox.> Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
"There’s a mound of leaves. We don’t know what’s going to be under the mound. Once we clear the mound we may find the remainder of the body or we may not," said Beyrer.
The superintendent of the Babylon Unified School District said in a letter to parents that students at the nearby school were kept indoors for recess while the investigation was underway, and that mental health resources would be provided "to assist our students at all grade levels, and we encourage any student feeling uneasy, anxious or scared in any way to please take advantage of them during this time." The letter noted that the investigation is otherwise unrelated to any of the schools.
Homicide detectives were on scene throughout the day with crime scene tape stretched across an area usually frequented by school kids, joggers and people walking their dogs. Police said it appeared the body parts had been dumped recently.
Local
Police didn't immediately provide any further information on the limbs found, hoping that testing the DNA and examining tattoos could help lead them to an identification. Investigators were looking into all possibilities as to what may have happened, and did not rule out that it may have been gang-related.
Police did not share whether the body parts are believed to be of the same person or how the individual may have died.
