2 bodies found in Manhattan rivers are identified as missing boys

NEW YORK – The bodies of two boys, who family members said were together shortly before they disappeared over a week ago, have been recovered from separate locations in the waters off Manhattan, police said Saturday.

One of the boys, Alfa Barrie, 11, who lived in the Morrisania neighborhood of the Bronx, was last seen May 12, police said. Alfa was reported to police as missing May 14, and his body was recovered Saturday morning from the Hudson River at West 102nd Street.

The other, Garrett Warren, 13, was last seen at around 1:30 a.m. on May 13 in front of his home in Harlem, according to police. Garrett was reported missing Monday, and his body was recovered from the Harlem River, on the east side of Manhattan, on Thursday morning.

It is unclear how or when the two boys entered the water. Police said their investigation into what led to the deaths was continuing. On Saturday, a spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office said the cause of Garrett’s death was accidental drowning.

An examination will also be conducted to determine Alfa’s cause of death, she said.

Since the boys were reported missing, search efforts had been underway, led by their families and community members.

In an interview this week with Africa in Harlem, a multilingual community news site, Alfa’s mother and sister said they last spoke to him before he left to go to school at Democracy Prep Harlem Middle School on the morning of May 12.

Fatima Diallo, Alfa’s sister, said she didn’t know Garrett before Alfa’s disappearance and hadn’t realized that he was also missing until she saw a flyer posted by his mother.

Friends who were with the boys on May 12 told Alfa’s family that they had last seen them at 145th Street in Harlem and had then separated from them.

Police obtained footage from security cameras at Anas Fish Market at 145th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, which showed the two boys there at around 3:30 p.m. after school on May 12, she said.

The family was alerted that Alfa was missing when another sister, who lives in the Bronx, called Saturday morning to say that he had missed his Friday evening ritual of spending the night at her home, Diallo said. Alfa would often leave school after early dismissal on Friday and travel to the Bronx with his younger sister, who attends the same school, she said.

Police said they responded at around 10:15 a.m. Thursday to reports of a body in the water near the Madison Avenue Bridge. Garrett’s mother was told of his death that evening at the 32nd Precinct and later identified him, said Iesha Sekou, CEO and founder of Street Corner Resources, an anti-violence organization with headquarters in Harlem.

“It was just heart-piercing,” said Sekou, who had been working with the boys’ families and police as they searched.

“I’m a mother,” she said. “And so there’s no way that you could be a mother and not feel that, in particular.”

A team of outreach workers with her group first heard that two people, initially reported to be adults, had fallen into the river on May 12, she said. By the next morning, children in the community were saying it was actually two children, she said.

For Sekou, the two boys’ deaths highlighted the dangers of the areas around the city’s rivers. She said her organization had spoken to city leaders about the issue and about the need for more safe spaces for children to spend their time.