Top NYPD officials provided more details Wednesday on their investigation into the case of two New York City boys who vanished together one Friday afternoon this month, then turned up dead in different rivers days later -- and days apart.
The baffling May 12 disappearances of 11-year-old Alfa Barrie, of the Bronx, and 13-year-old Garrett Warren, of Harlem, rocked their communities and their families, who said they weren't even aware the two knew each other.
The boys didn't go to the same school. They didn't live in the same borough. And relatives said the vanishing act was entirely out of character for both of them. NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig sought to fill in the timeline gaps Wednesday, delivering a detailed picture of the hours before and after the two went missing that Friday night.
He also emphasized the investigation was "active and ongoing," saying the NYPD was working with the Manhattan district attorney's office, the chief medical examiner's office and others to determine whether criminality was involved or the boys' deaths were just tragedies.
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"We want to find out exactly what occurred on that river," Essig said, referring to the Harlem River, where Warren's body was found and where the boys had last been traced the night they disappeared. "We owe it to the families for closure. And we owe it to the public as well."
Berrie left school at 12:15 p.m. and met up with Wilson at some point that afternoon.
According to Essig, the boys first got together around 3:30 p.m. May 12 and were tracked to a number of places across Manhattan, including a fish market, a house and a deli. At 6:43 p.m., Essig said Warren and Barrie were seen on a Citi Bike together near West 143rd Street and Lenox, and they were joined by a third youth. All three ride east.
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Between 6:43 p.m. and 6:50 p.m., the three went over a pedestrian footbridge. Two people were seen climbing over a fence and going into the water, Essig said, though he emphasized the video was taken from a distance. Fourteen minutes pass before any of the three boys is seen on video again, and they see only the third youth at 7:04 p.m.
Police say the third youth went into Colonel Young Park at 7:04 p.m. and is seen exiting it exactly two hours later, at 9:04 p.m. Five minutes after that, an anonymous 911 call comes in reporting two kids had been pushing each other on the river's edge in the area and both of them fell into the water. The dispatcher tried to engage the caller for more information. By the time cops arrived at the scene, the youth wasn't there -- and they couldn't track down the 911 caller.
Harbor and aviation units did a canvas of the immediate vicinity that night, Essig said, in the shallow part of the river and along the coast. Later that evening, detectives managed to identify and question the third youth. They located and interviewed a number of kids who had been in the park that night over the following days.
None said they saw what happened at the river's edge, Essig says. It was a crowded Friday night at the park, too.
"We know kids take video, post video, exchange video on social media -- if anyone has seen any video or heard of any video please contact us," Essig pleaded. "You are not in trouble for coming forward in a timely manner."
Warren's body was discovered first -- in the Harlem River, which runs between the Hudson and East rivers, closer to where the NYPD had been searching, late last week. The medical examiner ruled his death an accidental drowning.
Barrie's remains weren't recovered until Saturday, when it surfaced in the Hudson River, authorities say. His cause and manner of death are pending further study, the medical examiner's office said Monday.
Amid their blinding grief, the families have lingering questions. How could Barrie's body have gotten so far from Warren's if they went into the water at the same spot at the same time? Was anyone else involved?
A marine expert told NBC New York it's plausible for a body to drift from the Harlem River to the Hudson River. NYPD executives expounded a bit on that point Wednesday. Officials said differences in their bodies -- in terms of fat ratio or density, for example -- could explain why they surfaced at seemingly disconnected times in seemingly disconnected places.
The longer a body is in the water, the farther a current may carry it, they say. A member of the NYPD's Harbor Unit also explained the difference the current could make.
"When there’s an outbound tide, the Harlem River is going north and it's feeding into the Hudson. The Hudson's now going south, going out to the ocean. So if a body does surface during the time when there is an outbound current, it could easily travel north in the Harlem River come out the Spuyten Duyvil [Creek] and into the Hudson River then start traveling south," said NYPD Harbor Unit Inspector Anthony Russo.
Russo said that when a body travels in water, it is not often fully exposed or submerged.
"You’ll basically only see the back of a person. Their arms and legs hang down. You’ll only see the small of the back. If it’s at nighttime it would be very hard to see. They’re not very high on the surface," he said.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.
