In June 2023, the body of 27-year-old Karl Clemente was found floating in Newtown Creek, which borders the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. Weeks later, the body of 27-year-old John Castic’s body was recovered from the same area. In a recent grisly discovery, police recovered yet another body from the creek.
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Is this an intentional pattern or mere coincidence? Either way, the family demands answers.
Desiree Nicholson told PIX11 News, her 30-year-old son, Damani Alexander, was last seen on July 28 at the Knockdown Center, a nightclub in Maspeth, Queens. A friend of Alexander told CBS New York he received a suspicious message from him that night reading, “I think dudes trynna kill me.”
The friend said he then received another message reading, “Dudes waiting for me outside.” The friend told CBS Alexander stopped responding after that message. The next day, police found Alexander floating in Newtown Creek. Authorities say the medical examiner is still evaluating the cause of death. However, Nicholson decided foul play was a factor.
“The first thing they said to me is that they found him floating in the water, but there is no foul play, there’s no blunt trauma and there [are] no marks of violence. So I said, how can that be? I mean, Damani is a person who knows how to swim,” Nicholson told CBS New York, adding that she didn’t believe the police were taking the investigation seriously.
Karl Clemente (left), John Castic (right)Photo: GoFundMe, Facebook
Castic and Clemente — the other two men found in the creek last year — also left a nightclub, the Brooklyn Mirage, before being found dead, police said. The medical examiner declared their deaths to be a drowning…no foul play.
Could the issue really be about safety around the club and the creek? Willis Elkins of Newtown Creek Alliance told PIX11 the main foot traffic around the creek is from the nearby nightclubs. Though it is barricaded, there are some openings accessible to pedestrians. However, concerns over the safety of the area and its correlation to the deaths of the club goers are yet to be settled.
“The least we can do is make it safer in general to be in the [industrial business zone] in the dark. How are we responding to – the proliferation of nightlife in this area? How are we adapting to it? It’s not going to work to not have an organized response and way of managing it,” said New York Senator Julia Salazar, who has since suggested a safety resolution to prevent further incidents, per PIX11.
