Chicago cops closed a section of Garfield Park Sunday after finding the partial remains of a toddler Saturday evening.
A police spokesperson says a passerby spotted the youngster’s foot floating in the park’s lagoon, and that other appendages presumably belonging to the same victim were later retrieved from the water as well.
The submerged corpse appeared to have been initially anchored to the bottom, she indicated, and decay may account for its separated extremities, although dismemberment has not been ruled out.
The portion of Garfield Park where the badly decomposed human remains were discovered has been cordoned off as a crime scene today while detectives continue to collect more evidence.
The gender and race of the “two to four-year-old” child is yet unknown, however, but its mutilated corpse was sent to the coroner’s office for testing and identification last night, and a reporter for Reuters News observed divers still searching the freshwater pool at this hour.
Despite the major holiday weekend, access to the popular lagoon area of the greenway will reportedly be off limits to the public into next week – or for as long as the homicide investigation is in progress.
Locals claim scenic Garfield Park is unsafe at night due to poor lighting, vagrants, violence, and drug dealers. Moreover, although some measures to correct those problems have been taken in recent years, finding dead bodies there is, sadly, not uncommon.
Said a member of the park’s advisory council, “It wouldn't surprise me that someone would dump that there and no one would see them.”
This story is developing -- check back with Crime Magazine for updates.
