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Quick recovery of a severed body part helps increase the odds of successful reattachment. But the body part isn’t always lying right where the incident took place.

Sometimes machinery flings the appendage, and a search has to take place.

Such was the case in Overland, KS, when a 20-year-old man’s left ring finger was cut off when a lawnmower ran over his hand. The mower flung the finger somewhere in a grass-covered yard.

Nine-year veteran officer Tirsa Otero was called to the scene.

Medics asked the officer to look for the finger while they took the victim to a hospital.

Otero and neighbors scoured the area.

One of the others found the finger under a piece of wood, and Otero packaged it in ice and drove it to the hospital. Surgeons were waiting to re-attach it.

No word on whether the surgery was successful.

Tags: lawnmower, severed body part, severed finger