Road crew discovers human remains near Virden
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Human remains were found in a ditch last week in the rural municipality of Wallace-Woodworth, Mounties say.
Virden RCMP received a report at about 2:15 p.m. on Aug. 26 that a road maintenance crew had located two pieces of a human skull and a bone while working on Road 57 North, just east of Road 148 West.
The crew was cleaning out ditches following recent flooding in the area and stopped working when they found the human remains, RCMP said in a news release on Wednesday.
Police secured a perimeter around the remains.
Forensic anthropologist Emily Holland and her team were called to the scene the following morning and located a partial skull, right shin bone and lower left femur, police said.
Holland, who is also an anthropology professor at Brandon University, said her team had to search through a lot of soil and gravel to ensure they collected all the remains.
“We’re not really sure where this individual came from,” Holland said, adding that she’s unsure whether a burial was disturbed or what led to the remains being in the gravel.
She said the Manitoba Historic Resources Branch also searched the scene, but no other remains were found.
The next step in the investigation involves radiocarbon dating, which will determine whether the remains are historic and archeological or whether the individual died recently.
At this time, Holland said there’s nothing suggesting the remains are modern.
“If it says that they’re modern … then we have to start looking at what are the demographic characteristics of this person: how old are they, what’s their sex, what’s their biological affinity and then try to link that if there’s any kind of missing persons file associated,” she said.
If the individual can be connected to a missing persons case, then police can take a sample for DNA analysis, Holland said.
Her team will continue investigating if the results from the radiocarbon dating show the individual died recently, she said.
» tadamski@brandonsun.com