PYSHT — Friday’s discovery of a sneaker-clad severed foot — if it is, indeed, a human foot, and the first in the United States — adds to a saga that has puzzled authorities in British Columbia since August 2007.
Five feet — four right feet and one left foot — have been discovered inside athletic shoes along the Strait of George shoreline between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland.
Canadian authorities say they have found no reason to believe foul play has occurred, but the coincidence of running shoe-clad feet washing up on shore has sent them to crime laboratories in an effort to solve the mystery.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police three weeks ago said that DNA testing on a right foot discovered on Valdes Island last Feb. 2, and a left foot discovered June 16 on Westham Island belonged to the same man.
British Columbia authorities are now looking through lists of missing people to attempt to find a match.
A right foot found on Kirkland Island was identified in July as belonging to a woman.
Laterin the month, the RCMP said the first foot found one year ago belonged to a man from the lower mainland of British Columbia, but declined to identify him at he request of the family, newspapers in Vancouver and Victoria reported.
And two weeks ago, British Columbia coroners confirmed that they are looking into whether a body with no feet found on a beach in the San Juan Islands might be connected to the case.
No one knows who the body is — other than it’s a man’s who was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, according to the Canadian TV network CTV.
The body was discovered by a hiker on the eastern tip of Orcas Island in March 2007 — more than four months before the discovery of the first foot north of the saltwater border.
Worldwide attention on the mystery has grown in the past few months as more and more feet washed ashore.
But a sixth foot discovered at Tyee Spit in Campbell River, British Columbia, in June turned out to be a hoax.
A prankster placed an animal paw — possibly a dog’s — inside an Adidas athletic shoe.
One early theory that Canadian authorities broached early in the investigation of the five severed feet has been debunked.
The RCMP in British Columbia said that none of the feet belongs to the five men who died in a plane crash in the Strait of Georgia in February 2005.
