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Shoe With Human Foot Inside Washes Up On Vancouver Island Beach

The shoe was found on Sunday, Sooke RCMP said.

The BC Coroners Service is investigating after a shoe with a sock and human foot inside was found on a Vancouver Island beach over the weekend.

Charlotte Stephens made the grim discovery at Botanical Beach, not far from Port Renfrew, on Sunday afternoon, reported CHEK News.

“[My husband] was up on the driftwood and he happened to find the shoe. He picked it and brought it out on to the beach and we had a look at it for about five minutes and we thought it almost looks like there is an actual foot bone in it,” she told the outlet.

The shoe appeared to have washed ashore, Sooke RCMP said in a news release Tuesday.

The coroners service will spearhead the investigation, working with the RCMP's Missing Person Unit to identify who the foot belongs to through DNA testing, according to CTV News.

On Wednesday, the authority said the shoe was sold in March 2013, which means its owner died sometime between that month and December 2015.

Coroners said early exams indicate that the foot naturally separated from its body as a result of being in the water for a long period of time.

In an email to HuffPost B.C., Coroner Barb McLintock said there is "absolutely no suggestion of foul play" in the case.

Over a dozen feet found in B.C. in nine years

The coroner added that the foot found Sunday is the 13th to be discovered along B.C.'s coastline since 2007. She added that there's no indication of foul play in those cases, either.

Several of the remains from past discoveries, identified by DNA analysis, have been linked to suicides.

There have also been a handful of hoaxes. In 2011, two shoes packed with raw meat were found on beaches near Victoria. Police said they were likely the result of a high school prank, reported CBC News.

Three years earlier, the bones found inside a shoe near Campbell River, B.C. were found to be from an animal, not a human.

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