Human legs still wearing black socks and trainers are found in a 20ft long shipping container

 

Workers at a recycling plant in Thailand got the shock of their lives when they opened up a shipment of cardboard from the US to find a pair of human legs inside.

According to Mail Online, Thai police are speaking with US authorities amid fears the owner may have been murdered before being hidden in the container.

'It is possible the person was the victim of a murder,' said Lieutenant Colonel Dechanut Thayasirichuti of Sriracha police.

'It did not happen in our country though.'

The cargo was delivered on Tuesday, December 19, to a plant just outside Sriracha, a town around 100 miles south of the capital Bangkok.

When a worker began unloading the layers of compressed cardboard he saw a shin bone sticking out of a brown sports shoe with pink laces. The decomposed limb was still wearing a black sock and appeared to have been severed at the knee.

'I thought the bones were white poles,' the operator told local media.

'But then I saw the knees and the trainers. I was shocked when I realized they were from a human.'

Police were called and officers sent into the container found a second limb that stretched up to the pelvis, compressed in a cardboard cube and also wearing a black sock.

'We do not believe that the remains are from a local Thai person,' said Thayasirichuti.

'The body had already decomposed, so we believe it had been in the container for a long time before it arrived in Thailand.

'We suspect that the person was a foreigner and the remains travelled here.

'The shipping company will co-ordinate with foreign police.'

The remains have been removed from the rubbish and sent to the Forensic Science Institute at the Police Hospital in Bangkok for analysis.

Thai authorities have not revealed the name of the recycling firm or the company that sent the cargo on its 8,000-mile journey from the US.