Greater Sudbury Police and the coroner's office are investigating after an 8-year-old girl found a human jawbone near her home on Fieldstone Drive on Sept. 30.
Isabella Gauthier told Sudbury.com that she and her friend were going to check on a moth the children buried weeks earlier in the sandy pit at the end of their street.
"Then we saw the teeth," Isabella said. "I knew it was teeth, but I didn’t know what kind of animal or thing it was from."
Watch Isabella describe her grisly discovery in the video below:
The children told Isabella's father, Mark Gauthier, that they found an animal skull.
"We didn't pay much attention to it," Mark said. "It wasn't until the next day (that) I went down to take a look and at first glance I knew right away that it was probably not animal."
The police were called and the area was closed off on Oct. 1 to allow for further investigation.
Neighbour Martin Gagne sent in a photo of the remains. In the photo, you can see the lower jawbone, which has most of the teeth still intact, was sitting near the surface of the soil when it was found.
Fieldstone Drive is located in the Sunset Ridge subdivision, a newer neighbourhood that was built on rock. Neighbours said the area where the remains were found was once a cliff that has been backfilled with rocks and soil brought in from other locations and dumped.
If that's the case Gauthier said, the jawbone was mixed in with backfill trucked in from somewhere else. He hopes the discovery will lead to some form of closure for a family that has a missing loved one.
Police and the coroner's office continue to investigate.
