School to hold vigil for 11-year-old boy whose body was recovered from Hudson River
The child's 13-year-old friend, who died by accidental drowning, was found in the Harlem River.
A memorial and vigil for Alfa Barrie, a missing Bronx boy whose body was found May 20 in the Hudson River, will be held at his school Tuesday, a New York television station reported.
According to WPIX-TV, Barrie, 11, and his friend, Garrett Warren, 13, gained access to the Harlem River shoreline via a broken fence over a week ago. Security footage showed the boys and a third unidentified youth at Malcolm X Boulevard and 145th Street, reported WPIX-TV.
Barrie was last seen on May 12. The family reported him missing on May 14, and authorities recovered his body six days later. Warren was last seen in the early morning hours of May 13, was reported missing on May 15, and his body recovered on May 18, the New York Times reported.
Barrie’s body turned up in the Hudson River, and Warren’s in the Harlem River.
Only 8 miles long, the Harlem River flows from the East River to the Hudson River, which starts in the Adirondacks and ends in New York City, traversing 315 miles.
A boating safety expert told the New York Times it wouldn’t be unusual for bodies that entered a waterway at one point to end up at different locations. The speed of the current, for example, would play a factor, the Times reported.
Barrie was a sixth-grader at Democracy Prep, a Harlem charter school. The school’s CEO, Natasha Trivers, called Barrie “a funny, bright, witty, inquisitive and brave child,” WPIX-TV reported.
Barrie’s brother, Ibrahim Diallo, told WPIX-TV, “No matter what I do, when a mom loses a child, there’s no comfort that can come with that. This is one way to comfort her, to figure out what exactly happened. What happened to her child?”
The Times reported that the chief executive and founder of Street Corner Resources, Iesha Sekou, has been working with the families of both boys. “I’m a mother,” Sekou said. “And so there’s no way that you could be a mother and not feel that, in particular.”
Street Corner Resources is an anti-violence organization in Harlem.
The medical examiner’s office has ruled Warren’s death an accidental drowning but has yet to release Barrie’s cause of death.
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