Mystery at the Long Island City waterfront

That’s just great.

I was walking down there around 8:30 am yesterday with my dogs and saw the body from the end of Pier 1.

It was floating face down at the shoreline towards the middle of the willow area. All that was visible was the back of the head and shoulders and appeared to be a blond male.

There were about 20 fire fighters and a handful of police, including a small police boat with a detective sign.

I watched for about 1/2 an hour, but they were still dealing with the scene at that point and had not removed the body yet.

I’ve been looking for more info but have not found any yet. Any news from the 108?

We won’t really know what happened until it becomes a Law & Order episode sometime in the near future!

#7 – This is indeed a tragedy for the person’s family , but for some reason (unknown to us) it is being kept under wraps. I heard the sirens and activity yesterday and for about 15 minutes there were helicoptors overhead, but yet nothing was reported on any of the news reports last evening. Usually this sort of discovery has the media swarming all over it. For all we know, the family may have already been informed. I meant no disrespect in my comment about L&O – they often base future episodes on actual events.

A cadaver in the water starts to sink as soon as the air in its lungs is replaced with water. Once submerged, the body stays underwater until the bacteria in the gut and chest cavity produce enough gas—methane, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide—to float it to the surface like a balloon. The buildup of methane, hydrogen sulfide, and other gases can take days or weeks, depending on a number of factors. At first, not all parts of the body inflate the same amount: The torso, which contains the most bacteria, bloats more than the head and limbs. The most buoyant body parts rise first, leaving the head and limbs to drag behind the chest and abdomen. Since arms, legs, and the head can only drape forward from the body, corpses tend to rotate such that the torso floats facedown, with arms and legs hanging beneath it.

graphic…

#11 rocks!

Hmmm, so, by your logic, #16, the appropriate punishment for making light of a ghoulish situation – the situation, not the person, if you carefully re-read the comments above – is DEATH?!?

You might consider aiming your initial question right back at yourself.

And, no, I am not a Yuppie, nor do I live in a condo building. I could give a flying fig what anyone has to say about condo buildings.

Maybe it’s the guy who jumped into the East River on March 31st:

http://midwesternerinnyc.blogspot.com/2009/03/comedian-died-in-new-york-today.html

Very odd not to find much else about this elsewhere. Bodies turning up in the East River are not as common as they used to be.

Anonymous, without you this blog would seem, like, I don’t know– empty and pointless? I hope you post as often as your schedule permits, and I hope you can keep up with NYC Native.

Tried the caffeine thing?

PS – #16, post your name and I bet I could convince you to LEAVE! Let me guess, you are single, 20 something and unemployed… Duh!

Anyone hear anything about this? I live in the building overlooking the park and watched the police pull the body out of the river so the rumor is definitely true but never saw anything on the news at all. Never seen anything like that and couldn’t believe there wasn’t any news about it.

oops, #16… sorry NYC Native

26, and when in our lifetimes was the East River ever filled with dead bodies? I love it when people who grew up in a double-wide in Akron pretend to be so streetwise.

Sorry #26, should’ve referred to you as Gabriel.

Need more tea…real tea, not the fake “tea” being dumped into rivers across Uh-muh-ruk-ha, like those White Power members of the Astroturf movement being sold by Fox News and the RNC as an actual grassroots movement. Too funny! But I digress.

Why has there been an apparent media blackout about this incident? I failed to find out any information online. Please advise if anyone has any information on this poor, unfortunate, deceased person who washed up on our shores. Awfully odd for this to have not made “the press” by now, even if they were unable to contact the next of kin.

Oh yeah. I heard that the “body” was apparently a prop for a show, but since the supplier did not want to get cited for dumping, did nothing about it when it turned up one short. I’d try over at SilverCup–ask them.

Of course, it may be part of an elaborate ad campaign a la the ATHF campaign in Boston that cause da huge terror scare a couple years ago.

wow…nice detective work, you cracked the case from 2003 Moron