GRAND FORKS - East Grand Forks police still can't put their finger on where two severed fingers that were found in late May at an East Grand Forks campsite came from.
Melissa and Monty Atkinson were setting up at a Red River State Recreation Area campsite May 26 when their 6-year-old child found the two fingers on a picnic table. They called law enforcement, and East Grand Forks Police Lt. Rodney Hajicek is trying to find out where they came from.
"I've been here 26 years now, and yeah, this is one of the more strange cases," he said.
The Minnesota state crime lab in Bemidji was able to determine the digits were the middle and ring fingers from a left hand, attached by skin from the palm.
But officials weren't able to find any matches after running fingerprints in a nationwide database of entries from people booked in jails mainly on felony charges, Hajicek said.
The fingers have since been brought back to Grand Forks for a medical examiner to perform DNA tests.
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Meanwhile, police have searched the river bank and campsite area with no new leads.
"We did have a cadaver dog come in and run that whole area without a hit," Hacijek said.
But the East Grand Forks Police Department does have some theories, and Hajicek has one of his own. He said he wonders whether the fingers match the DNA of a 23-year-old man who severely injured his hand April 30 in downtown Grand Forks when a firework he lit went off in his hand.
"We are looking at it to see if it is related," he said. "I will do a DNA comparison to see if possibly that's it."
Hajicek said he thinks it's possible a bird could have carried the fingers from Grand Forks across the Red River to East Grand Forks, but the Police Department still needs to conduct tests and talk with the man from the accident, Hajicek said.
Police also are looking into missing person cases and whether anyone came from the campsite to Altru Hospital with similar injuries, but there hasn't been a lot of information, he said.
"Nothing's come from the public whatsoever as far as anyone heard of or is missing, other than this possible injury accident that happened in downtown Grand Forks," Hajicek said.
Police are keeping all possibilities open to figure out how the fingers got there, though.
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"And that's why we're taking this to the extent that we are," Hajicek said.
Hajicek asked for the DNA samples Tuesday, and he is unsure how long it could take.
