A group of children on a summer camp outing in Greenfield, Massachusetts, discovered human skeletal remains on an island in the Connecticut River.Photo:Greenfield Police Department/Facebook
Greenfield Police Department/Facebook
A group of children from a summer camp made a startling discovery during a recent outing in Massachusetts.
The discovery was made around midday and afterwards an adult contacted local police, the office said.
“Investigators collected what they could that day,” the statement read. “The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was on the scene the following day to ensure recovery of all remains.”
The local medical examiner is currently working on identifying the remains.
“This is very much an open investigation,” Laurie Loisel, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office, told theDaily Hampshire Gazette.
Kurt Heidinger, executive director of Westhampton-basedBiocitizen, an environmental philosophy program the children were taking part in, told theGazettethat a 7-year-old boy first spotted the bones.
The group — which included about two dozen students and staff members — had been investigating the low water level of the Connecticut River at the time.
“We were just doing what we always do, which is taking kids out during the summer just to explore,” Heidinger said.
Heidinger said he initially thought the remains belonged to a buck, but when a teacher and several children later returned to the site after a lunch break, they moved some sand on the ground and unearthed a skull.
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“I said, ‘Oh, my goodness, that is a human skull,’” he recounted, noting that the discovery quickly turned somber.
Heidinger told the newspaper the students have since created a small shrine near the Westfield River in Chesterfield in honor of the person whose remains they found.
source: people.com