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OSSINING, N.Y. - An Ossining woman whose son drowned after a prank at Orchard Beach said police didn't even notify her when his body was found. Instead she said, she found out the news from a co-worker.
Sheila Lilley, the mother of 26-year-old Bryan Johnson, said she has identified his body, which was recovered Tuesday from Long Island Sound near City Island.
“It’s definitely him,” Lilley said Wednesday afternoon. “I went down to the city morgue to identify his body, and it’s definitely him.”
Johnson was reported missing June 20 after he and several friends apparently went for a late-night swim in the Bronx. Police said previously that Johnson disappeared just before 11 p.m. after jumping from a boat into Long Island Sound with a group of others to swim. Police said the boat pulled away without Johnson.
Lilley said a co-worker from Sing Sing Correctional Facility called her Tuesday to say New York City police had found a body.
“Yesterday, a co-worker called me and said there was activity on City Island and that they found a body,” Lilley said, adding that she immediately called Einstein Medical Center.
“When I found out, I called them and I asked them if it was my son. I asked them if they found anything on him like tattoos. I asked about the (tattoo of a) crown on his chest, and the woman there says ‘It’s your son.’ That’s how I found out.”
Lilley said she then had to wait until Wednesday morning to identify the body because the morgue had closed.
“I had to wait all night,” she said. “What’s sad is that if a co-worker never told me about this, I would’ve found out about everything on the news.”
Calls to the NYPD press office were not immediately returned Wednesday.
Family members say other passengers on the boat had told them the driver, a classmate of Johnson's at Ossining High School, decided to pull a prank and drive the boat about 50 yards away from the swimmers in the water. After returning to the boat, the other eight passengers noticed Johnson was not on board and called 911, according to police.
But piecing together other details has been difficult for Lilley and other members of the family, because they say they have had little communication with police since the incident. Lilley said most of the information about her son has come from friends and family in the neighborhood over the past few days.
“The detectives tell me to leave them alone and let them do their investigation, but then his body was found right where he went missing; so don’t tell me you’ve been looking for him,” she said. “Out of respect, they should’ve done something to get in contact with me during this.”
At least three people on the boat were from Ossining, Lilley said, and several passengers have come to speak with her since the incident.
“Two girls that went with him that day came by, and the kid that graduated with him also came by the house,” Lilley said. “They wanted to tell me their stories. So I called the detectives to tell them, and they didn’t want to listen,” she said.
Aside from a few brief conversations on the night of the incident, Lilley said police have not reached out in any way to communicate with her and other members of the family. Roxanna Holmes, Lilley’s sister and former co-worker at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, said she was surprised by what she said was a lack of communication from police.
“The way the authorities have handled and treated this case has been totally disrespectful to our family, and it’s outrageous,” Holmes said. “You don’t have to tell us about the investigation. But just call and say that you’re doing something. They said to us, 'We’re all under the same shield.' Well, it’s hard to tell.”
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Comments (10)
This is very sad. May he Rest in Peace.
My Thoughts and Prayers To The Family....
And you are the one who said that your kids were "at a greater threat" from the police than marijuana. If they are 3 and 5 then your even writing this to begin with was an absurb statement. If your children grow into law abiding citizens, which I sincerely hope they do, then I'm certain they have nothing to fear.
Good luck to you sir and good day.
Possession of marijuana is a violation in New York, like a traffic ticket. Check New York law on the web:
"221.05 Unlawful possession of marihuana.
A person is guilty of unlawful possession of marihuana when he knowingly and unlawfully possesses marihuana. Unlawful possession of marihuana is a violation punishable only by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars."
No one life is getting ruined from this arrest. Not a felony. Regardless, if you have a problem with the law write your congressman, don't bash a cop.
Back to the point, there is no justification for the angry self-diluted outrage exhibited by you or the subject of this article.
Your comments about the penal system are comepletely irrelevent to the topic. Shame on the officers who enforce the laws of the state for not consulting you to see what you think they should do. As far as the death notification, I am sure it would have been made in a timely manner. The source in this article is a woman who clearly has a chip on her shoulder, as do you.
Finally: if your children are threatened by law enforcement, then your children are a threat to society.
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"Finally: if your children are threatened by law enforcement, then your children are a threat to society" haha, my children are 3 and 5, so if they are a threat to society, then you need a reality check,,,,,,,,,,,
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While I sympathize greatly with this mother, it is clear that she is taking out her pain and anger in the wrong direction. In previous articles she even went so far as to suggest that the search for her son would have been more extensive if he weren't black. This is a truly ignorant statement and only serves to distract from the tragic death of her own son, a role usually reserved for the Reverand Al Sharpton's of the world.
The truth is the search for this young man was a massive effort, lasted many many hours, utilized tens of thousands of dollars in resources, and thousands of manhours. All this despite the fact that common sense dictated that by the time these agencies were called this young man was already either on shore or dead. Specialized aircraft were flown in from as far away as Cape Cod.
The sad fact it the area of water in which this young man drownded is cloudy and vast and despite the best efforts of professionals the waters sometimes won't give up the dead until some tme has elapsed, sometimes weeks in colder weather.
I think a more productive direction to vent her grief in would be at those who callously left her son to die, not those that tried ceaselessly to save and then recover him.
Finally, to commenter GreenburghDad: this article is about a young man who drowned. It's not about how much you hate all the darn evil police and their pesky enforcement of the law. And by the way, the mother of the young man who died is employed by the "privatized prison system"...she is a corrections officer at Sing Sing Prison. The prison is run by New York State and is in no way privatized. So really your comment boils down to the fact that you speed and smoke marijuana. Way to make it all about you!
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