Last night, I received a text from a friend and trusted local resource – Meg from Dandelion Wine, “Dude. They just found a body floating in the river off the got pier.” A girl ran into the wine shop and said she was taking a sunset selfie with her dog when she noticed the crowd and a police boat pulling a dead body out of the water.
When I get news this breaking, google does not turn up search results, but often Twitter is helpful. There was not much except two tweets.
One from @internetsmagic said, “Dead body floating in east river. Guy only wearing boxers w a Mohawk pulled out in Greenpoint. #investigationcomplete” 
And a sunset photo from Greenpointers contributor Oriana @bkspaces with a caption that read, “Sunset over a Greenpoint pier where a police boat just pulled a dead body out of the water. Oh, Brooklyn.”
Oriana was there last night when the body was being recovered and sent me the following description of what happened:
I was sitting on the rocks at the end of Java St, where I go often to watch the sunset. I saw a big thing floating by way out in the the water — I thought it was maybe a big dead fish. Java is in between two piers; I wasn’t paying too much attention but as the lump got closer to the India St pier, a bunch of people rushed down to the middle of the pier and watched it. This was probably 8:30. Right as it went under the pier, several cops & firefighters came running down the pier, and I realized I could see flashing lights on India St. Someone yelled from the Transmitter pier “Hurry, get him out of the water! He’s still moving!” As far as I could tell, this was untrue, and the thing had not moved at all the whole time, other than being carried by the current.
The really strange thing is that all of a sudden TONS of people started appearing, running down Java and I guess India Sts to the middle of the pier. Several cars pulled up too, and I swear whole families with small children got out, everyone streaming over to the pier to watch what was happening.
The cops brought a big ladder along the pier and a stretcher, but at about the same time two police boats came. My view was obscured (I’m not the kind of person who wants to see a dead body, so I never left my spot on the rocks). The boat was on the other side of the India pier from me, and I believe they tied a rope to the body and towed it away. They went north, so I lost sight of them pretty quickly.
As of this posting, there is no other information online about the recovery or the identity of the person. Will update with more info.
Why do you have yo put yourself in the story? No one gives a flying fuck that YOU got a text.
The body was recovered down Manhattan Ave in Newtown Creek, not the India Street pier FYI.
Thanks for the info Kori.
Lol manhattan avenue is blocks away from newtown creek.
Newtown creek is actually a factory not a body of water.
um?
Wondering if it has anything to do with this story:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/37/27/dtg-man-missing-in-east-river-2014-07-04-bk_37_27.html
The tone of this post and the one on Free Williamsburg are more suited to bitching about a new condo development. A young man is dead, and I think you can assume he has friends that read this. Report the facts and offer your condolences to Steven Middleton’s family, you don’t need to post those tweets, texts, or that pointlessly long account. None of them are informative, and they are all pretty disrespectful.
Hi Matthew-
Thanks for your comment and sorry for offending you. I had no information to go on other than those accounts and tweets. No other news outlet had reported on it, so the only valid and trusted information I had was what readers who saw it first hand sent to me. I meant no harm or disrespect. It’s very sad what happened to this young man. Jen G
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/body-found-newtown-creek-missing-brooklyn-man-cops-article-1.1850729
Here’s why I wrote that one tweet. Wife baby, sis and I walked down to the hoopla on India. Saw an ambulance putting away an empty stretcher. All the cop cars and firetrucks took off and we walked down to the pier. Some teen boy showed us the body floating by the wood pillars by India in video footage on his phone. He told us that the body was a light skinned kid with a mohawk and only in boxer shorts, face down. He said police boats dragged the body away with ropes around his neck. To where there could be less people watching we guessed. At the end of Manhattan ave.