The New Zealand Herald

Second gruesome beach find

- Belinda Feek

A woman who found an animal carcass on an Auckland beach wonders if it’s connected to Wednesday’s discovery of dog skin on the same beach.

Cristine Douglas was walking her dog along Takapuna Beach about 1.30pm on Saturday when she made the gruesome discovery.

“We were just out walking our dogs . . . it’s an unusual thing to see on the beach. You see dead birds and stuff but not an animal carcass. I’ve been googling skeletons and it . . . looks more like a dog than anything else.”

Douglas thought it could be linked to the discovery of what’s thought to be a piece of skin belonging to a dog on the same beach on Wednesday.

Local man Brent McCarty found the skin, which he said was more than a metre long, on the beach on Wednesday morning.

After putting it in a rubbish bin, he rang a Devonport-Takapuna Local Board member, who told Takapuna police. At the time, police said they were yet to locate the skin and were unable to provide any updates.

A spokesman for Animal Management said the organisati­on had no way of identifyin­g the dog the skin had come from but the case didn’t appear to be linked to any missing dogs.

Contacted about the latest discovery, police said yesterday they still had no update on their investigat­ion.

Douglas thought it was “a bit odd” that animal skin was found one day, and then a carcass was discovered.

“Quite often we come across things washed down on those beaches, just below Takapuna Grammar. I don’t know what it is . . . I’m just putting two and two together.”

She said the carcass was a bit under a metre long. The dog skin was about a metre long.

“My friend rang the police because we didn’t know what to do and then I wrapped the bones up in an old sweatshirt and then it put it higher up on the cliff so it didn’t get washed out and apparently the council were going to collect it.”

The carcass looked fresh, she said.

The difficulty is we have had unpreceden­ted demand for acute services . . . It’s got a little bit crazy. Richard Steel, of Middlemore Hospital

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