Brooklyn 5-Year-Old Drowns at Queens Beach: Police

A five-year-old East Flatbush resident named Ezekiel Gray drowned in the ocean waters off Jacob Riis Park Beach in Queens late Saturday afternoon, police say.

Around 5 p.m., when NYPD responders arrived to the beach, they say they “discovered an unconscious and unresponsive 5-year-old male who was removed from the water by an on-duty lifeguard.”

By the time the FDNY arrived, Gray had gone into “cardiac arrest,“ says a spokesman.

Gray was then rushed to Brookdale Hospital in Brownsville, where he was pronounced dead.

The boy’s “distraught” aunt tells the New York Daily News that Gray had been attending a “large family party” at the park on Saturday afternoon, and got stuck in a riptide after entering the ocean with two siblings.

“He was taken away by a wave, and no one could find him,” she says.

The National Weather Service hadn’t predicted there would be any especially strong rip currents at beaches in Brooklyn and Queens on Saturday. However, there was an advisory posted to the NWS website warning of possible rip currents the next day, on Sunday.

An NYPD spokesman says he’s not sure if the boy was sucked under by a rip current. ”It’s still an ongoing investigation,” he says. “All we know is the lifeguard is the one who pulled him out.”

It’s now up to the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to determine Gray’s official cause of death.