Police: Human remains found in Tioga-Nicetown
TIOGA-NICETOWN (WPVI) -- Technicians carefully removed human remains from an empty lot in the Tioga-Nicetown section of Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon.
In total, eight evidence markers highlighted the scattered bones across the lot at the corner of 17th and Atlantic streets.
"There's a skull, a lot of teeth, a lower jaw, ribs, a spine," Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said.
Police say most of the body parts are intact. The corpse, they say, was found six feet underground and appeared to be wearing a pink jacket.
"Preliminary, the medical examiner believed that the clothing appeared to be that a female would wear," Small said.
The empty lot was once the site of a laundromat; it is now a worksite.
Police say private contractors digging up the lot discovered a set of bones on June 19th.
Thinking they were animal remains, workers never contacted police until Tuesday, when a human skull and jaw bone were discovered.
Police say the human jaw bone fell out of a suitcase on the site earlier in the day.
Residents say the laundromat was torn down a year ago. Police believe, based on the level of decomposition, the body had been buried there within that time frame.
"We sit here every day, and it's sad that there's a body and we didn't even know it was there," resident Dan Fowler said.
While it's still too early to tell whose remains these are, some teeth were found attached to the jaw bone and dental records may help identify the body.
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