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By Patrick O'Donnell, The Plain Dealer
April 14, 2010, 2:59PM
Updated 6:15 p.m.

ELYRIA, Ohio -- DNA tests confirmed that a severed foot found last month on an abandoned railroad trestle was a missing Lorain woman's, but officials are not entirely certain what happened to her.

The Lorain County Coroner said Wednesday he assumes Darla Kustra, 56, is dead, but officials still have not found her body.

Kustra, a divorced mother of four, lived less than two miles away from where the foot was found by four youths.

Investigators could offer only theories Wednesday about what may have occurred to Kustra. The leading one is that Kustra walked to work at a local plastics company along Ohio Route 57 on March 26 and was struck by a vehicle. But sheriff's investigators did not find clothing or debris from a collision after searching with several people and tracking dogs.

"It was very bizarre that the foot was located there but there was no other evidence," Lorain County Sheriff's Captain John Reiber said. Only a small amount of blood was found on the trestle.

But the trestle itself is 16 feet above the roadway, so the foot would have needed to be thrown high in the air for it to land there.

"Something propelled the foot up there," Reiber said. "It's conceivable that someone could have tossed it up there."

The foot was not cut off but had broken bones and appeared torn off in impact, Coroner Paul Matus said. It also had no teeth or claw marks to suggest it had been moved by an animal.

"There are a million theories," he said.

Authorities guess Kustra's body became stuck under the vehicle or was tossed into an open cargo area in back. They have issued a national alert for police to be on the lookout for a body matching the description.

Reiber said the Ameritemps agency where she worked reported her missing when she failed to show up for her 5:45 a.m. shift at Advance Plastics Reclaiming, where she had been working for a week. Investigators contacted her daughters and obtained a DNA sample from one to make a match.

Court records indicate Kustra was homeless for a time and had a history of mental illness.

People who lived around Kustra's Pearl Avenue apartment said the woman walked everywhere. "She walked all over, in the summer, in the snow, in the sleet, in the hail. She was a walker," Pablo Perez said.

Reiber said Kustra had no car and that her drivers license had expired.

Matus has not issued a death certificate because there is no body. Matus said he assumes, however, that Kustra died because people cannot suffer those kinds of injuries and survive without immediate medical treatment.

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