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Body, Wrapped In Carpet, Found Outside Harlem Starbucks
By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 13, 2019
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By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 13, 2019
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The body of a man, inside of a rolled-up carpet, was discovered on a Harlem sidewalk outside of a Starbucks on Thursday morning.
The passer-by who saw the body and called 911, Israel Savage,told the Daily News, "I saw two feet — what appeared to be feet, they had socks on them — hanging out of a trash bag. There were multiple trash bags around this package, some cardboard and a carpet. And it was all taped."
Police say that officers responded to the 911 call (a Starbucks employee also called) around 5:52 a.m. and found "an unidentified adult male, unconscious and unresponsive, within a red carpet," at the corner of West 145th Street and Bradhurst Avenue. EMS pronounced the man dead at the scene.
Authorities have deemed the man's death a homicide. NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said that victim had trauma to the head.
A red Target shopping cart was found nearby, and thePost obtained video showing two males pushing a shopping cart with a rolled-up carpet, apparently containing the body, on the sidewalk.
“My first thought was, it must be a prank — a mannequin or something like that," Savage told the Daily News. So he asked Starbucks for some gloves and found the body's head "wrapped in plastic." He added, "It was heavy, so that made me suspicious that maybe it’s not a mannequin. To double-confirm, I went over where the socks were and the sweatpants, and I separated the two and it was what appeared to be a male leg."
A neighbor was shocked, saying to the Post, "This is some ‘Law & Order’ s–t. This is a fairly busy intersection… it sounds like somebody might have offed [him] somewhere and they had to get rid of it.”
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murder
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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