The discovery of a human hand by a man walking his dog on Staten Island last week has been identified by the city’s medical examiner as belonging to a 63-year-old woman who died in 2011.
The deceased woman was buried inside of a wooden coffin at Resurrection Cemetery. This cemetary is a Catholic burial ground located on Staten Island’s south shore.
The man found the hand at Amboy Road and Cunningham Road on Thursday afternoon. An excavation for a new burial site near the woman’s resting place most likely dislodged the hand around Feb. 27.
It is likely that the equipment separated the hand from the woman’s body, and the hand was consequently lost in the excess soil deposited in a nearby tree line.
The woman has not been publicly identified. A spokesperson for the cemetery told silive.com that the remains would be “respectfully reinterred.”
The circumstances of the hand’s discovery have prompted the cemetery to issue a statement of deep regret to the deceased woman’s family. They recognized the amount of sorrow that this incident likely caused the family.