A female torso was found floating in the water of the Oshawa Harbour on Monday night and investigators are now trying to identify the remains.
Durham Regional Police say the remains were discovered by fishermen -- including an 11-year-old boy and his grandfather -- near Simcoe Street South and Harbour Road at around 8:30 p.m. last night.
The 11-year-old boy, David Kuczepa, described the situation as “just freaky” while speaking to CTV News Toronto.
“Now I don’t even want to fish at the Oshawa Pier,” Kuczepa said.
A post-mortem examination will be conducted later today to determine a cause of death. A coroner on the scene said the torso suffered "obvious signs of trauma.”
Police say the service’s homicide unit is now in charge of the investigation, which is still in its preliminary stages.
“What we are working on is trying to identify who this person is,” Const. George Tudos told CP24 at the scene.
“It was just the torso of the female. With just that alone, it’s difficult to determine any age of the victim. I know that hopefully with the post mortem results we’ll get a better understanding of the ID and age.”
Members of Durham Regional Police's marine unit and public safety unit were on scene helping homicide detectives search for additional evidence.
Former Toronto police homicide detective and CP24 crime specialist Steve Ryan said these types of cases are typically “very difficult” for investigators.
“At the end of the day, they’re going to wind up reaching out to other police in the interest of all their missing people’s reports,” Ryan told CTV News Toronto.
“So then the daunting task is to take all these missing persons reports, get DNA from the family members all those people, one at a time have them swab their cheek, send that off to the center for forensic sciences and that’ll be compared to the DNA on the body.”
