A human head was found Tuesday morning on the side of a Florida road, police said.
A jogger found the head underneath an overpass while running through a residential neighborhood in St. Petersburg, according to police. The area is near Lake Maggiore Park and Boyd Hill Nature Preserve.
The woman reported the human remains to police around 7 a.m. and homicide detectives were sent to search the overpass and the nearby woody area for clues, St. Petersburg police spokesman Rafael Lopez said.
The woman told police she jogs through the area daily but had not done so in the past two days, Lopez said.
It is still unclear when or how the head ended up under the overpass. The identity of the person is also still unknown. Detectives have sent the head to the medical examiners office for a forensic examination.
#stpetepd investigating human head found on the side of the road on 38th Av S between 31st and 34th St. South. Anyone with info call 727-893-7780 pic.twitter.com/zoICcaYvpI
Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health’s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald’s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow. Support my work with a digital subscription
