Give UMDNJ A Helping Hand

As if the ongoing mess at UMDNJ wasn't sufficiently bizarre for your tastes, here comes the piece d'resistance.

A 2005 graduate of the UMDNJ medical school was charged today with taking a hand from a school-owned cadaver and giving it to an exotic dancer, who kept it in a jar in her South Plainfield home.

Ahmed Rashed, 26, was released on $1,000 bail after turning himself in to South Plainfield Police headquarters, where he was served with a complaint charging him with theft of human remains.

Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Judson Hamlin said a complaint was signed Friday charging Rashed with taking a left hand from cadaver owned by the medical school in May or June of 2002. “He was identified through an investigation by South Plainfield police and UMDNJ police,” Hamlin said.

Rashed, who now lives in Los Angles, Calif., first learned he was under investigation in late July, said his lawyer, Hassan Abdallah of Elizabeth. He said his client contends he is not guilty.

South Plainfield police first discovered the hand July 21 after going to the Diana Drive home of Linda Kay, responding to a call of a suicidal man. Although no man was found in the house, officers saw the severed left hand in a glass mason jar of formaldehyde on Kay’s dresser.

Meanwhile, Gov. Corzine now says that Democrat Wayne Bryant should step down from the Budget and Appropriations Committee, which comes on the heels of revelations that Bryant had a no-show job at UMDNJ.