A severed leg washed up in the Delaware River. What else is in the water?
It’s not unheard of to find bodies in the Delaware — but finding only a body part is unusual.
The Delaware River is home to all kinds of stuff: Jewelry. Tires. Soda cans. Water bottles. You name it, and it has probably washed up at some point.
From time to time, bodies do, too.
That happened Sunday, when a woman walking a dog in National Park, Gloucester County, spotted part of a decomposed leg — from the knee down — along the shoreline.
Authorities are collecting a DNA sample from the leg to identify the person, a process that could take several weeks. The leg had no clothing or markings, and no other body parts were found.
It's not unheard-of to find bodies in the Delaware. Authorities in the region have recovered at least three in the last three years, including some swimmers who drowned.
But finding a body part alone is unusual.
"This is the first actual body part that I've seen in the last 12 years," said Bernie Weisenfeld, spokesman for the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office. "Mostly it's intact people, but if they get hit by some sort of vessel, dismemberment is possible."
How the leg was severed and how it entered the river remain a mystery.
Sometimes the full story never comes out. In January 2014, a woman's body was pulled from the Delaware in West Deptford, Gloucester County. A forensic anthropologist drew a sketch of the woman, but no one came forward to identify her.
The Delaware runs more than 300 miles, with miscellaneous items pouring in from storm drains and people tossing trash. Nonprofits and state agencies occasionally perform cleanups, but it only takes one flood — or a lot of people littering — to dirty the water again.
All of these factors can make it difficult to know how long something has been in the river, said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
"There's no telling how far it traveled before it got to where it got," he said, speaking generally.
Maya K. van Rossum, who leads the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a nonprofit that seeks to preserve the river's natural habitat, has seen a section of a house — even a car — floating down the river.
Pretty much anything, large or small, can end up there, she said.
"It's all in there, unfortunately," she said. "At one point or another."