And then there’s this… I read about it a few months before they found the foot’s “owner.”
“A foot found floating in a Yellowstone National Park hot pool last summer belonged to a 70-year-old man from Los Angeles, park officials said Thursday. It still isn’t clear how the man, Il Hun Ro, ended up in the spring, but investigators don’t suspect foul play, park officials said in a statement. Park staff found Ro’s partial foot inside of a shoe in Abyss Pool in the park’s West Thumb Geyser Basin in August. Investigators concluded that whatever happened to Ro occurred on the morning of July 31, but that nobody saw it. They identified Ro through a DNA analysis and notified his family, officials said.”
So many questions. How could someone lose their foot in a National Park and not bother to report it to anyone or go to a local hospital?
How could they figure out who this guy was from his DNA? Is there a national DNA database I’m not aware of? Should I assume he was a criminal at some point, and that’s why they happen to have his DNA?
Not sure if you’re joking, but from the article:
“Yellowstone spokesperson Morgan Warthin declined to provide more information about the incident, including what happened to the rest of Ro’s body or how investigators believe he died.”
Yes, he died. But why was this a mystery for four months? If someone died and leaves their foot in a hot pool, wouldn’t somebody have said something about it?
I thought of that, but they haven’t found any other body parts. The foot was found in a shoe, so maybe that protected it somehow. I suppose he could have been by himself and either fell or jumped into the pool, but you think someone would have noticed he was missing. Nobody saw it happen. They notified the family, so he wasn’t a complete loner.
They had no idea who the foot belonged to. How did they do a nationwide DNA search? Is that a thing?
True enough. Maybe a family member reported him missing, and they did a DNA test to see if the foot’s DNA matched a sample of the missing person’s hair. Mystery solved!
I would think the larger bones might still be around. It would be hard to search for them if they were down there somewhere. The shoe was found floating I believe, which means the material the shoe was made of survived.
It’s pretty much a slim chance of anything surviving. Usually if someone goes into one of those pools e just disappears altogether. The fact that a shoe and a foot came out is kind of remarkable.
" The take-home lesson is that reaction with rocks in the subsurface exerts a powerful control on the pH of the fluids, creating the alkaline-chloride fluids we commonly encounter in Yellowstone geysers and hot springs, which have pH values generally from 6.7-9.5."
That’s not all that acidic, which would dissolve the bones, I assume.
It’s not uncommon to find only a foot in a shoe, while the rest of the body is undiscovered. The shoe (particularly running shoes) is very buoyant, and the rest of the body often sinks. This pool is fairly deep, and they are not sending anyone in to look for more parts.
Maybe he was eaten by a bear. Some scavenger picked up his foot and flew off, some other scavenger attacked in mid-air, and the foot fell into the hot spring.
Bears rarely attack people unprovoked, but anything is possible. I live in an area with Grizzly and Black Bears all around. If you encounter one in the woods, you are unlikely to be attacked unless you startle one unexpectedly, or it’s a sow and her cubs, then all bets are off.
I think it’s more likely he committed suicide. There are fences and warning signs everywhere. I think it would be hard to fall into a hot pool accidentally. I’ve been to these hot pools many times.
Is it possible to send down an underwater robot to search the moist area in question for body parts? I dont know how visible the water would be, so this is a question from ignorance.
I agree with the other posters that mentions that a tennis shoe would keep the foot afloat, as opposed to the rest of his body (he only had one shoe, then, we can conclude?) Finding the other shoe might solve the mystery.