Drowning Victim's Body Recovered In Shinnecock Canal

In just one day, a GoFundMe page set up to assist the family of 22-year-old Jhon Escorcia Arroyo, who died after he jumped into the Shinnecock Canal on July 14, exceeded its goal of $30,000, taking in $32,352 as of the morning of Tuesday, July 19.

The page was set up to help the family with funeral expenses and send Arroyo’s body back to his native Costa Rica.

A resident of Westhampton, who had moved to the United States four years ago, Arroyo was described on the donation page as “a person with a pure heart, full of love, willing to always say yes and a smile that would never erase from his face.”

Speaking of the outpouring of support on Monday, his sister, Kristel, said, “It’s amazing, I thank everybody.”

According to Southampton Town Police, at 2:11 a.m. on the morning of July 14, a man later identified as Arroyo left the Dream nightclub on Canal Road in Hampton Bays, walked across Canal Road and jumped into the murky water, planning to swim across. His female companion watched him for a few minutes, then lost sight of him.

She spent 40 minutes searching for him herself before calling police, Town Police Lieutenant Susan Ralph said.

Town Police, bay constables and fire marshals and the Southampton Village Police K9 unit responded to the area, as did the U.S. Coast Guard. Volunteers from the Southampton, North Sea and Hampton Bays fire departments also joined the search, and the police department’s unmanned aircraft was used as well.

At 2:40 a.m., the U.S. Coast Guard responded with a 60-foot helicopter, its biggest, which flew out of Air Station Cape Cod. It searched from the skies above Shinnecock Bay.

Also searching was a 29-foot rescue boat from U.S. Coast Guard Station Shinnecock. The Guardsmen conducted a “saturation search,” Coast Guard spokeswoman Lieutenant Natasha Hope said.

On Saturday, July 16, Arroyo’s body was located at approximately 2:28 p.m. Bay constables were called by a boater who had found his body in a cove at the south end of the canal, approximately 2,000 feet from Dream.

Avid fisherman Liam Gerard of Mastic Beach casts a line into the Shinnecock Canal just about every night. He said he was on the west side of the canal, opposite the locks tower, early on the morning of July 14 when a woman drove up, asking if he’d heard anybody yelling.

The woman was looking for her male companion, who had jumped in the canal and planned to swim across.

“I told her, ‘I think you should call the cops right now, get a boat,’” Gerard recalled on Friday. She believed he’d made it across the canal and was calling for her to come pick him up. “He could have been yelling for help, and they just got confused.”

It was two hours into the outgoing tide, Gerard related. “The tide was up very high because of the full moon, so the current’s going to be a little greater.”

The woman drove away and a friend began walking south down the locks looking, while she went up near the Sunrise Highway bridge on the other side, “walking through all that grass, looking for him.”

“I finally ran up to her and said, ‘Call the cops, this is no joke,’” Gerard said.

Well versed in the conditions of the canal, Gerard noted: “There are all types of eddies and whirlpools, even if you are the best swimmer, like Michael Phelps, that’s going to give you the hardest time. And plus it’s going to pull you under.”

He also pointed out there is a lot of debris under the water, like cement blocks, rebar and wood.

“He could have gotten hooked on a piece of rebar if he got pulled under,” Gerard said. “There’s a lot in that water you could get hung up on. I’ve fished it enough to know.”

He said he’s out fishing in Southampton and Hampton Bays “every night till 5 in the morning.”

“I went down there last night and his whole family, friends were down there,” he said. The two women, he said, “they’re both distraught. I saw them last night.”

The search was suspended Thursday night, as darkness descended at 8:30 p.m. Southampton Town Police said it resumed Friday morning at 7:30 a.m. and continued until dark. They were out looking again early Saturday morning.

With a current running south from the canal to the ocean, Shinnecock Bay comprises 9,000 acres of aquatic habitats including tidal flats, marshes, inlet shoals, and open water, according to town records.

Construction of the Shinnecock Canal, the state’s first salt water canal, began in 1892. Some 4,700 feet long, it connects Shinnecock Bay to the south with Peconic Bay to the north. Fishermen have said that on a full moon high tide, the current can run 7 knots, lessening in the open water of Shinnecock Bay.

The current in the canal is swift and strong. Last year, a fisherman, aided by a handful of others at the scene, pulled a woman from the canal. She’d jumped in, and in that instance, Dream security was alerted right away, as were nearby State Troopers. Even with an immediate response, the rescue was difficult and dramatic.

Aware of how treacherous the canal’s waters can be, about five years ago, two local Rotary Clubs, Hampton Bays and Southampton, underwrote the placement of 22 life rings along the sides of the canal. When the rings are pulled from their stations, an alarm goes off.