On Sunday morning a National Parks Service patrol discovered a severed human foot inside a size 11.5 Puma running shoe on the south end of Ocean Beach between Taraval and Ulloa streets. According to an investigator from the Medical Examiner's office, "it was probably rolling around on the seabed for awhile."

There was no sign of the rest of the body, the Chronicle reported Sunday evening, and it seems likely that the foot's owner has been missing for quite awhile. Redditor Moonsuga posted a photo of the green and black mesh Puma shoe on the site yesterday morning.

Similar incidents have occurred in the Pacific Northwest in recent years. Thirteen or fourteen severed feet washed up on the coasts of Washington State and British Columbia between 2007 and 2012. Although there was some speculation that a serial killer was at work, the most commonly accepted explanation was that the feet belonged to victims who had been lost at sea for years, becoming detached from their bodies due to decomposition. Two of the feet that washed ashore in 2011 were identified as belonging to a woman who committed suicide in Vancouver nearly seven years earlier.

[Chron]