Severed Leg found on Tenney Stadium Football Field; Believed to Belong to Animal

Image Source: SKIDMORE, OWINGS & MERRILL LLP

Members of the Marist girl’s lacrosse team found what appeared to be the remains of a knee joint on the football field Wednesday, Feb. 7. The bones, which most likely belonged to an animal carcass, interrupted the team’s morning practice at around 9 a.m., when athletic trainer Alexis Ayala identified them in the turf near the score board.

“[Marist security] received a call from an athletic trainer stating that he’d found a bone,” said Marist's director of safety and security John Blaisdell. “The trainer moved it off the field and then we called the police and the police picked it up.”

The Town of Poughkeepsie Police Department responded to the incident, reported the remains as “lost or found property” and sent them for testing at the medical examiner’s office. This process, of testing the bones and determining their origin, could take weeks if not longer.

According to officials, the police department constantly receives calls regarding findings like this. “Ninety-nine percent of the time these are deer carcass. Sometimes people kill deer, or sometimes a coyote or a fox will drag a bone, sometimes for miles,” said Poughkeepsie police.

Marist security also maintains that the bones are that of an animal. “Animals haul this stuff all over the place so who the heck knows,” said Blaisdell.

Though slight, the possibility remains that the knee did not belong to an animal. “We don’t have any reason to believe it’s human but we don’t know that it’s not,” said a police official.

According to another officer, based on the state of decomposition, "if it were a human remain it will have been from something that happened a long time ago."

The girls lacrosse team and athletic trainer, Alexis Ayala, declined to comment on the incident.