Mystery surrounds origin of human leg found on New York subway
New York’s mass transit experience took a grisly turn over the weekend when a disembodied human leg was found on the 4 line between 167th and 170th streets in the Bronx.
Detectives are trying to establish who the limb belongs to and how it got on a subway track bed. The city’s medical examiner later took possession of the leg to find out more about its origins.
Authorities could not confirm if the leg belonged to a man or woman, or how much of the limb was found.
The discovery came after a notable run of incidents on the subway, including a cellist being struck with a metal water bottle at Herald Square and a mass shooting at a Bronx subway stop that killed one person.
On Monday night, a 57-year-old man was found dead in a subway car. New York police said they found drug paraphernalia nearby and were working to determine the man’s cause of death.
On Saturday, meanwhile, an argument turned violent at the Queens Plaza station and a man was beaten with a metal pipe. That attack came two days after a Brazilian tourist was slashed across the neck in an unprovoked assault at the same subway station.
The find of a dismembered leg is unlikely to warm commuters to taking public transit. Although New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, has added 1,000 uniformed and undercover officers to patrol the system, crime in the subway is up 22% since the start of the year, according to the NYPD.
Thousands of items are lost across the subway network, including uncommon objects including funeral urns, a welder’s mask and a blender.