On September 30, just after dawn on Friday, police recovered the body of a young man from the lake in Central Park.
A maintenance worker in New York’s Central Park made the gruesome discovery of a fully clothed, unidentified male in his 20s floating in one of the park’s lakes. The man was unconscious and unresponsive when EMS responded to the sighting around 2 p.m. The NYPD recovered the body from the lake and pronounced him dead at the scene.
The NYPD said this death doesn’t appear to be criminal in nature, but they are still investigating. They’re looking through missing person reports to identify the body. The medical examiner is yet to determine the cause of death, as well.
Responders were seen carrying a covered body away on a gurney as police cordoned off the area.
Skeletal remains were found behind the Met
In January 2022, the skeletal remains of a badly decomposing body were found by a jogger inside a tent behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the time, police said they were investigating reports that a homeless man was living in an encampment near East 79th Street and East Drive, where the body was found. But because the body was so badly decomposed, it could not be identified as male or female.
A homeless man was found dead
On September 22, 2021, a body was found in Central Park with a rope around the neck. The body was found near East 65th Street and East Drive in an area known as A Native Meadow. It took authorities ten months to identify the victim.
He was finally identified in July 2022 as a 26-year-old homeless man named Elvis Garcia. The death was declared a homicide due to the complex nature of the rope tied around his neck. “It was knotted in such a way that he couldn’t have done that himself,” an NYPD spokesperson said. Police determined the cause of death to be asphyxia due to strangulation. No arrests have been made in this case.
Two bodies were found at the same spot
In July 2021, a dead body was found floating in Harlem Meer, a lake in Central Park. A woman called the NYPD when she saw a man’s body floating in the water. The deceased has been identified as a Black man in his 40s.
In September 2020, Luis Castoire was fishing in Harlem Meer when he hooked his line into a human corpse in the water. Castoire noticed it was a male in his 30s and promptly called the police to inspect the body.
