Detectives are investigating the possibility that the man found dead in a burning pile of garbage on Hendrickson Street on Jan. 12, may have been dumped in Marine Park after dying somewhere else.
“The burn patterns [between the victim and the trash] don’t match,” a police source familiar with the case told this paper. “And the garbage [the victim] was found in is not usually found on Hendrickson Street. Right now it could be that he died there or that he was brought there, but we won’t know for sure until the medical examiner and our crime scene investigators find out more.”
The NYPD says the victim, a white male who has yet to be identified, was found under a pile of rubbish set ablaze on the side of the Furniture Zone on Flatbush Avenue at 3:43 am.
At the time, nearby residents told the New York Daily News that the victim may have been homeless.
“A lot of homeless people hang around back there,” one man told the Manhattan paper. “It was probably one of them.”
Yet some residents didn’t believe the homeless theory — and investigators quickly confirmed their suspicions.
“[The police] think he was dumped there,” said Greg Borruso, the president of both the Marine Park Civic Association and the 63rd Precinct Community Council. “They think he was killed elsewhere and that this was the ideal place to dump the body.”
A spokeswoman for the city Medical Examiner’s office said that there was not an apparent cause of death — meaning the victim had not been shot or stabbed. An exact cause of death has yet to be determined as investigators await the results of toxicology tests.
Anyone with information regarding this incident is urged to contact the NYPD CrimeStoppers hotline at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
Reach reporter Colin MIxson at [email protected] or by calling (718) 260-4514.
