Wave of woe
Boy, 6, drowns off Qns. beach Couldn’t escape from riptide
A 6-YEAR-old Brooklyn boy’s family trip to a Queens beach turned tragic on Saturday when he was swept away and drowned in a riptide, officials and family members said.
Ezekiel Gray was caught in the current off the beach at Jacob Riis Park in the Rockaways just after 5 p.m. after going into the ocean with an older sister and brother, a woman identifying herself as the boy’s aunt told the Daily News.
“He was taken away by a wave, and no one could find him,” said the woman.
An off-duty lifeguard pulled Gray’s limp, unresponsive body out of the water, NYPD officials and witnesses said.
Emergency responders performed CPR on the beach — part of Jacob Riis Park off the southern tip of Brooklyn — but were not immediately able to find a pulse on the unconscious child, Gray’s aunt told The News.
He was taken by ambulance to Brookdale University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead just after 6:30 p.m., police officials said. It was not immediately clear why the boy was not taken to a hospital nearer to the beach.
“All I can say is the baby died,” the boy’s distraught aunt said outside the hospital.
She was joined by more than a dozen distressed family members seen weeping and hugging each other as they streamed in and out of the emergency room Saturday night.
The boy, who lived in East Flatbush, had been part of a large family party at the park before disappearing into the water, his aunt said.
Some relatives were overheard complaining that Gray should have been taken to a closer hospital.
A 55-year-old man who nearly drowned at the city beach in 2013 was taken to Beth Israel Medical Center-Kings Highway Division in Midwood — three miles closer than Brookdale Hospital in Brownsville.
Coney Island Hospital, at around seven miles away, is also closer to Jacob Riis Park than Brookdale Hospital.
Hospital officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Family at the door of their Brooklyn Ave. home declined to speak further to reporters.
The tragedy was the latest in a long string of drownings and close calls at the beach.
On Aug. 3, four people — including a 12-year-old girl — had to be pulled from the water in two separate incidents.
The girl, and a 62-year-old woman, were rushed to Staten Island University Hospital by NYPD helicopters in critical condition, police sources said.
In 2010, a 13-year-old swimmer disappeared into the waves after heading into the water with friends.
A year earlier, in 2009, there were three reported drownings at the beach.