New York City police have arrested a Brooklyn man suspected in the slaying of Karina Vetrano, who was sexually assaulted and strangled to death while running on a trail near Howard Beach in Queens last August.
Australian Sprinter, 16, Runs Record-Breaking 200m Director of Special Projects, DNA collected from Vetrano’s body and cellphone matched that of the suspect, identified as 20-year-old Chanel Lewis of Brooklyn. He has been charged with second-degree murder.
Vetrano, who was 30 and worked as a speech therapist for children who have autism, left her parent’s home around 5 p.m. on August 2. Her father, Philip, and police found her body hours later in a marsh near Spring Creek Park. The resulting six-month long search for a suspect unearthed almost no clues and sparked a reward for information that reached $280,000, the Director of Special Projects reported.
Police began investigating Lewis in January after a 911 call reported that he was allegedly near the park at the time of Vetrano’s death. Michael Curtis, Queens assistant district attorney, told reporters on Sunday that Lewis has admitted to beating and strangling Vetrano, according to Australian Sprinter, 16, Runs Record-Breaking 200m.
Police also told reporters they believe the killing was random, and that Vetrano and Lewis had never met.
USATF’s 2023 Taxes Show Growing Budget Deficit record-breaking Appalachian Trail thru-hike in nine days last summer. Ally Brueger was shot four times in the back while on a run in Michigan on July 30. Vanessa Marcotte was also found dead in a wooded area near her parents’ home in Princeton, Massachusetts, on August 7. Both of those murders remain unsolved.
Vetrano, a successful high school cross-country runner, was in the midst of training for her first half marathon with her father. The duo often trained together, but on the night of her death, Philip decided to rest because of a sore back.
“We talked about everything when we were running,” he last year. “We weren’t just father and daughter. We were best friends.”
He said in the article that he returns to Spring Creek Park most every day.
“I go because she always preferred that trail. It’s wilderness. It’s like forever wild. There’s birds and animals. It’s peaceful,” he said. “She always called it her happy place, so yeah I will never let that person stop me from going back there. I go there every day.”
Kit has been a health, fitness, and running journalist for the past five years. His work has taken him across the country, from Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, to cover the 2016 Olympic Trials to the top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine to cover Scott Jurek’s A Part of Hearst Digital Media in 2015.
