An East Bay BART station was closed for about an hour this morning, after a gruesome discovery was made: A human foot, lying on the tracks.
BART spokesperson Jim Allison says that the foot was found on the tracks at the Downtown Berkeley BART station at around 3 a.m. Monday. BART officials closed the station at 4, Allison says.
Crews that were inspecting the tracks made the horrible discovery, Allison says, describing it as "an unusual start to the workweek."
The foot — a right one — almost certainly belonged to a woman who was struck by a train at that station on December 20, Allison says.
As the Chron reported at the time, at around 8:30 a.m. on the 20th, "a person somehow ended up on the tracks at the BART station along Shattuck Avenue and was pulled under a train."
Rescue crews pulled the victim, identified today only as "a woman" from beneath the train. Though she was transported to Highland Hospital in Oakland at the time of the collision, Allison says today that she lost the lower portion of her right leg, but survived the incident.
Allison says that though the Alameda County coroner's bureau was initially called, once investigators made the connection between the foot and the 22-day-old case, the coroner was deemed unnecessary and didn't respond to the scene.
By 4:20 this morning, service had resumed at the station, and by publication time there were no delays expected as a result of the incident.