Police find severed head, foot in park by Toronto

TORONTO – A severed human head and foot have been discovered in a park near Toronto, police in Canada said Thursday.

Peel police Acting Insp. Randy Cowan said officers discovered the head Thursday morning in the Credit River in Mississauga.

Cowan said it's not clear whether the foot belongs to a man or a woman, but investigators believe it was severed in recent weeks. Police have not said if the foot and head are from the same person.

"Without a cause of death we can't call it homicide, but certainly foul play — there's definitely something amiss," said Cowan.

The right foot was found in the Credit River near the Hewick Meadows Park by hikers and the police marine unit found the head later Thursday.

Police can't yet say if the body parts were placed there or were transported there by the water from some other point in the river, which flows from headwaters above the Niagara Escarpment to Lake Ontario.

A human head was found in a Montreal park in July belonging to Jun Lin, a Chinese student who was killed and dismembered in May.

Canadian porn actor Luka Magnotta is accused of dismembering Lin — his lover — and mailing the body parts to Canadian political parties and schools. He pleaded not guilty to murder charges last month.

Since 2007 on the western coast of Canada, about a dozen severed feet encased in shoes have washed up on beaches near Vancouver, along the southern Georgia Strait and off Washington state in separate incidents.

Most of the remains are unidentified, although investigators said at least two of the feet belong to men who were reported missing.

In previous cases, police said it appeared the feet separated from bodies naturally in the water and foul play wasn't suspected.