http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/crime/nyc-legs0218,0,5899349.story?coll=nyc-manheadlines-crime
Body parts found in subway
BY DARYL KHAN
STAFF WRITER
February 18, 2005
A Jehovah's Witness was handing out pamphlets about the end of the world in the Nostrand Avenue subway station yesterday when she saw someone carrying a bag of body parts.
The parts, an arm and two legs, were found by a maintenance worker at 3 a.m. yesterday in a subway tunnel 200 feet north of the platform of the A station in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a police source said.
"How horrible; that's horrible," said the Jehovah's Witness, who has lived in the neighborhood for 36 years but did not want her name printed. "If this isn't the end of the world, I don't know what else to call it."
Initially, many commuters thought the remains were from a train accident.
Police have not identified to whom the parts had belonged, but said they appeared to belong to a man. The parts were taken to the city medical examiner's lab for testing.
"Yo, they just found a body down there," Vedel Folks, 18, said to his friend, identified only as Ref, after climbing to the street.
"They didn't find a body," Ref, 20, said, seeming annoyed. "Just parts."
"Yeah, well, that counts too," Folks said.
Ann Toussaint, 36, laughed upon hearing of the discovery, as many did. She said she's somewhat used to hearing about the workaday harm people are capable of doing to each other - shootings, stabbings, muggings - but severed body parts struck her as absurd.
"Anything can happen in New York," said Toussaint, who frequently uses the A station. "You've got to take the train, regardless. Everyday it's something new."
Toussaint said she has no choice but to continue taking the train every day.
"You have to go to work. You have to go out. You can't stay inside," she said.
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