Mystery Human Foot Found Severed, Rotting In Train Station — And It Was There For 22 Days
Mondays are usually pretty rotten, but in Berkeley, California, this week has really gotten off on the wrong foot.
A right foot, to be exact.
After 22 days moldering somewhere in the Downtown Berkeley BART station, an overnight maintenance crew conducting standard work on the track found the limb, SF Gate and the Los Angeles Times reported.
The disgusting find was made about 3 a.m., and it’s not clear how the foot managed to lie in the train station unseen for nearly a month, the Washington Post noted.
BART spokesman Jim Allison called the discover an “unusual start to the work week,” Berkeleyside reported. Hopefully, the macabre discovery means the week can only get better from here.
The station was closed immediately after the foot was found, but only for about an hour. Media reports indicated that the Alameda County Coroner was called, and a professional service removed the rotting limb from the station.
No delays in service were reported.
Of course, the obvious question that’s often posed after a foot is found by itself, with its owner nowhere to be seen, is: How exactly did it get there?
BART officials do have a theory, and if this isn’t the right answer, surely local authorities will have a lot of questions. They have already, however, stated that they do not suspect that it arrived at the station due to foul play, and it seems pretty likely that the solo foot belongs to a woman who, on December 20, flung herself in front of a train in the very same station.
Back in December, about 30 people were on the platform when an unnamed woman apparently jumped onto the tracks, Berkeleyside reported at the time.
Erika Dumaine, 28, was one of the unlucky few who witnessed the incident. She and her partner were waiting for a San Francisco-bound train when a man suddenly yelled out, “She’s jumping!” They turned to look, saw the northbound train stop, and then heard a woman talking.
Trouble was — she was talking from underneath the train.
“It was really horrible. My partner was really shaken up. There were sirens immediately. People were scared. They didn’t know what was going on. There was a guy yelling, ‘I can’t believe she jumped. I can’t believe she jumped,’ over and over.”
The BART driver never saw the woman before she jumped.
According to a December SF Gate report, the train was shut down for two hours on that Sunday morning and the woman was described as being stuck underneath the train. Around 8:30 a.m., police arrived to find that the woman had been pulled underneath it, and both firefighters and rescue crews had to rescue her. About 9 a.m., she was rushed to an Oakland hospital.
“The train operator from the incident train told officers that the female appeared to have jumped down onto the trackway on her own and laid across the tracks as the train entered the station,” according to the BART police log.
The woman reportedly survived her sudden jump onto the train tracks, but at the hospital immediately afterward, she was put on a psychiatric hold for 72 hours. No details about the woman were ever released, except this: She lost part of her right leg in the incident.
Fast forward to Monday and BART staff’s unusual morning discovery. Remembering the horrific sight in December, Jim Allison has put two and two together.
“This was a right foot. All signs point to the fact that this is probably the same foot.”
And you thought your Monday was bad.
