Authorities said an athletic shoe containing bones and flesh has been found on a beach in Washington State. Police investigators are currently trying to establish whether the finding is linked to a series of human feet found in shoes along the coast of British Columbia over the past 12 months.

The flesh and bones contained in the shoe were sent to the King County medical examiner's office in Seattle to determine if they belonged to a human, said Clallam County prosecutor Deb Kelly. If the tests prove the remains to be human, the next step would be to establish if the DNA is the same on the feet found washed ashore in British Columbia.

"When we say a foot it's kind of a speculation at this point," Detective Sgt. Lyman Mooressaid said Sunday.

"What it was is, it was a sock inside the shoe that appeared to contain decomposed flesh. We don't know at this point whether that's animal, whether it's human, or what it is."

The shoe which contained flesh and bones was reportedly found on Saturday by a woman. She said she told the sheriff's office that she found the black, high-top shoe along the beach on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, about 30 miles west of Port Angeles.

Across an area along the Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland, authorities have found 5 athletic shoes containing human feet. The shoes were found separate since August 2007 in the Strait of Juan de Fuca which separates the Canadian island and Washington's Olympic Peninsula.