Feared foul play is a bear of a case

SANTAQUIN, Utah County — Santaquin Police Chief Dennis Howard received some unsettling news Sunday.

A foot had been discovered in the foothills east of I-15, and it appeared to be human.

Two doctors and a pathologist confirmed it. Howard got a good look himself.

"It looked human to me," he said.

It seemed as if Howard's small-town police force had stumbled upon something quite grisly.

A murder, perhaps.

So they called in the fire department, search-and-rescue teams, the Jeep patrol — even the county sheriff's mounted posse — and they scoured the hills above Santaquin looking for other body parts.

For eight hours, 56 people searched 200 acres.

But they didn't find any more remains.

As darkness fell, the police department prepared an ominous-sounding press release that read:

"On Sunday, private citizens in Santaquin reported finding possible human remains. So far, nothing else was located."

Then Monday morning Howard awoke to more bad news.

A hand had been discovered near the same area, and it appeared to be human.

Like the foot, a little dog had found it and dragged it home.

The dog's owners were so upset they asked Howard to keep any nosy news reporters away.

Who wants to be known as the neighbors who found a human hand on their porch?

So Howard agreed to keep their identity to himself.

He had more important things to think about anyway, such as a possible murder investigation.

"We didn't know what we had," he said.

Monday at about 10 a.m. he found out.

The state medical examiner's office called to say the foot wasn't human after all.

It was a bear paw.

Howard figured the foot had been skinned and left in a trash can by a taxidermist or a hunter. There were both in Santaquin, and bear-hunting season had just ended.

Maybe a dog had raided a trash can and brought the bones home.

Either way, Howard was relieved.

And there was no reason to feel foolish.

The foot, which had no hair on it, had fooled two doctors and a pathologist, and it wasn't until the medical examiner's office took X-rays that it was identified as the foot of a bear.

"It's a lot more amusing today than it was yesterday," Howard said Monday. "Two doctors, a pathologist and the death investigator all told us it was human. They had us pretty wound up. We're very, very relieved that it was just a bear."

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E-mail: jhyde@desnews.com