FEDERAL WAY, Wash. — While walking on a beach, a Tacoma man stumbled upon a gift-wrapped box with a human toe inside.
Kevin Ewing told KIRO 7 he was with his family at Dash Point Beach on Father’s Day when he made the discovery.
“We like to walk the high tide lines and see what the tide brings in you know, like marine life and feathers and different things like that,” Ewing said.
He ended up discovering much more than the typical beach finds.
“I found what looked like a little Christmas package is a little square box wrapped in green cloth and yellow string,” he described.
Ewing thought it was a prayer box or message in a bottle-type thing at first, but it ended being the unexpected.
“Sat there in shock for a few seconds and then realized this looks like you know, a severed human toe,” he recalled.
He says the toe was wrapped in white cloth next to a feather, grass, sage and tobacco.
“A lot of things are going through my head like - where is the rest of the body? Like, did this wash in from the tide, or the water? Did somebody leave this here intentionally to be found?”
Ewing says he took photos of the box and told a park ranger immediately.
He says he also found a dead, mutilated seagull not too far from the box. He’s unsure if the two are related.
“Kind of looked like it had kind of been skinned from the neck down and it was like missing its feathers,” He described.
Until now, he still can’t help but think why those items were stashed together in the box.
“Like related to a missing or murdered person. Or maybe there’s somebody out there playing some kind of, you know, weird, sick game,” Ewing said.
Washington State Patrol (WSP) took over the investigation. We reached out to the King County Medical Examiner to find out who the toe belongs to and how long it’s been decomposing and are waiting to hear back.
WSP said the toe appears to be from an adult man. The agency also sent out information to local law enforcement to see if the toe might match any of their records, MyNorthwest.com reported.
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