Few clues emerge after body of infant is pulled from New York’s East River
NEW YORK — The baby boy whose body was found alone in the waters beneath the Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday was surrounded, in death, by teams of investigators the following day, seeking to learn how he came to be there. Detectives searched video hoping to glimpse his final moments alive, and doctors hovered over his small body.
On Monday, there were few new clues: The boy’s age was estimated at between 6 and 9 months, his race Hispanic or black, the police said. An examination was conducted, but further testing was required to determine the cause of death, a spokeswoman for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner said.
It remains unknown whether the boy was dead before he entered the water or whether he drowned. It is standard procedure when a baby is found to search for a drowned adult in the area, under the theory that they entered the water together and became separated. No other bodies were found in the heavily trafficked East River — a tidal estuary subject to strong currents — on Monday and, by late afternoon, the police presence there had cleared out.
The boy was found Sunday afternoon near the South Street Seaport, a popular destination for tourists that divides Manhattan from Brooklyn. Indeed, it was a family of tourists from Oklahoma who spotted the body floating face up, wearing only a diaper. One of the tourists, Monte Campbell, tried to revive the baby using CPR, and when officers arrived they joined him, but the boy was pronounced dead at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Lower Manhattan a short time later.
The investigation will likely explore several avenues at once, with a search of the neighborhood’s many video cameras likely first and foremost.
A challenge to identifying a dead baby is the fact that, compared to adults, few people know them. “They don’t have any fingerprints,” said Lt. John Grimpel of the Police Department’s public information office.
“No parents have come forward,” he said. “They’re not as easily identifiable as a full-grown human.”
Police said the body showed no signs of trauma. It wasn’t clear how long the child had been in the water. The medical examiner will determine how he died.
The Campbells, their two sons and a niece had just returned from a ferry trip to the Statue of Liberty and were talking about where to get dinner when they saw the baby.
“I thought it was a doll,” said Mr. Campbell, 46, of Stillwater. “911, they put me on hold and at that point I decided I had to go make sure. So I handed the phone to her and got the baby.”
Mr. Campbell’s wife, Diana, took video and photos of the scene, hoping the images would be helpful in identifying the infant.
“Someone knows that child,” she said.
In 1993, a newborn girl’s body, just hours old, was found in a trash bag in an apartment building’s courtyard in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a dish towel wrapped around her neck. The police released a sketch of the baby’s face and the towel as recently as 2016, to no avail. There have been no arrests in the case.
Investigators in the case of “Baby Hope” were likewise unable, for decades, to identify the young victim, in this case a 4-year-old girl whose body was found in a picnic cooler near the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan in 1991. It would be 22 years before a DNA match led investigators to identify her mother and learn the child’s true name, Anjélica Castillo. Her cousin, Conrado Juárez, was charged with her murder and is awaiting trial.