Teachers were scratching their heads when a human hand was found at a school in Dublin one Friday morning.
A bird had dropped it in the yard of Our Lady Immaculate in Darndale, a suburb of Ireland’s capital.
‘It’s a particularly grim discovery for anybody to have to make, particularly in the grounds of a primary school’, Dublin MEP Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said at the time.
Luckily no children were around to be traumatised by the sight. It was half term, so the kids were elsewhere, but that made the severed hand’s origin more of a mystery.
Six weeks on, that appears to have been solved after DNA testing confirmed the identity of its owner.
The night before February 21, children at a nearby bonfire had been playing with a gas canister when it exploded.
One of them showed up to hospital with injuries including a missing hand, so when police were called to the school that Friday, they had a good idea where the body part came from.
DNA samples were taken from the boy and compared with the hand, which had been ferried off for examination.
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The results were revealed on Sunday. Unsurprisingly, the severed hand belonged to the injured child.
‘He was obviously quite badly injured in the incident at the bonfire’, a source told Sunday World.
‘The thoughts of those who investigated this matter are with him and his family.’
Metro has contacted the police for comment.
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