Cops Looking For Owner Of Fingertip Found Stuck On Fence [View All]

[matcom]

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Building superintendent Franklin Rodriguez found a bloody surprise when he went to take out the trash Saturday morning.

Alarmed by the sight of blood on the garbage bags already in the alley, Rodriguez looked up and spotted a 1 1/2-inch-long severed fingertip stuck to the top of the 4-foot-high chain-link fence that separated the Belmont Avenue building from its neighboring apartment buildings.

Rodriguez called the police and they discovered a trail of blood leading to the building next door. Rodriguez said the trail led the cops to the apartment of one of his tenants - Jose Rodriguez. The two men are not related, Franklin Rodriguez said.

"When the police opened the apartment, there was a lot of blood, but we didn't see Jose," Franklin Rodriguez said.

City spokesman Stan H. Eason said police found a bloody towel inside the apartment. The man still hadn't returned home yesterday, Eason said.

Police contacted hospitals Saturday and were told none had reported an injury of this kind, Eason said.

The fingertip was taken into evidence at the State Medical Examiner in Newark.

"Police still haven't determined the origin of the fingertip," Eason said. "Nobody's showed up to claim it."

The matter, however, "hasn't been linked at this point to a homicide," Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said.

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