Family keeps vigil after teen jumps into Manhattan’s East River, is swept away
The great-aunt of a teenager who jumped in the East River kept a sad watch Sunday over the lower Manhattan waterfront as police divers conducted their third day of searching for the missing boy.
Alena Godfrey, 60, believes her 13-year-old grandnephew, Kavion Brown, was goaded into jumping Friday by his friends as a dare.
“They need to go into social media, into these schools, and find out what kids was with him,” Godfrey said. “Because quite a few kids, I’m hearing, was with him.”
Kavion jumped into the water off East River Park near E. Sixth St. just after 4 p.m. Friday, sparking a search including boats and divers from the NYPD harbor unit and an aviation unit chopper. As of Sunday, the boy still has not been found.
“He took his clothes off. He was in his basketball shorts and he went over in the water,” Godfrey said. “He never came back up.”
Godfrey, who lives in Midtown, stood sentinel by the river because Kavion’s grandmother — her sister —asked her to be there if police pull his body from the water.
An NYPD patrol car was parked on the pedestrian walkway near joggers and people with fishing poles as a soccer game was played on a nearby field.
“We watched the scuba divers and everything,” Godfrey said of the start of her vigil Saturday. “We kept watching and then when the sun was going down, you know, it’s not too much that they can do. We went home. I got up this morning. I did the same thing.”