Human hand found at popular tourist spot: Dog makes gruesome discovery

Police say that a human hand has been discovered by a dog after it washed up on a British beach which is popular with tourists.

The hand was found at Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight. A member of the public handed the hand over to the Boat House, officers at Hampshire Constabulary have revealed. Analysis has now been carried out on the discovery, which has confirmed that it is a human hand, which had been in the sea for a signficant time.

The hand has now been sent for further analysis in a bid to try to determine who it might have belonged to. It is likely that pathologists will be looking at how old the skeleton hand is in order to determine whether it is modern or ancient.

Police statement

A spokesperson for Hampshire Police said: “A member of the public handed in human remains at the Boat House at Freshwater Bay this morning. We were called at 11.02am.

“Initial analysis confirms that this is a human hand and has been in the water for a significant amount of time. It has been sent away for further analysis.” It is understood that the remains were a skeletal hand which was still attached to part of a forearm. Freshwater Bay is one of the prettiest on the island and is popular with tourists in the summer months.

This latest discovery follows a find of human remains on the Isle of Wight last year. However, although they sparked a police investigation, they were later found to have been the remains of a woman from the Iron Age.

Carbon dating in that case revealed that the skeleton was more than 2,000 years old. A pathologist could not determine a cause of death because of the age of the bones. Those bones were found by brothers Hubert and Graham Smyth on an area of privately owned foreshore.