Doomed Queens hiker was ‘upset’
A Queens elementaryschool teacher who went hiking in the Catskills a week before his body was found there was “kind of off ” and “a little upset” before he left his home, a neighbor told The Post on Sunday.
The Kew Gardens neighbor said he was one of the last people to see 46-year-old Keith Johnson alive on Saturday, May 5, before Johnson left.
“He told me he was going camping,” Ken Achan said. “He seemed kind of off. I didn’t see any equipment on him. He looked a little upset. He wasn’t himself.”
Johnson often went camping with a buddy, Achan said.
“They’d plan trips together. If one would go, the other would go. They’d back each other up in case of anything.”
But on this trip, Johnson went alone and seemed “a little upset” when he left his apartment,” Achan said.
By last Monday, when Johnson, a popular band teacher at PS 29, didn’t show up to work, Achan said a fellow teacher came by to look for him.
“It was atypical of [Johnson] not to show up,” Achan said.
He added that both the co-worker and Johnson’s brother subsequently came by the apartment to search for clues.
A missing-person’s report was filed Friday.
Video shows Johnson’s car, a 2006 Hyundai, crossing the Throgs Neck Bridge heading out of the city on the morning of May 5, the NYPD said.
The car was found Saturday off a trail just south of Albany, about 70 miles north of where his body was discovered in the town of Shandaken.
An investigation is ongoing. Foul play is not suspected, authorities said.