Karina Vetrano.
New York police have a suspect in custody in the murder of slain jogger Karina Vetrano.
ABC 7 said Vetrano’s parents had spoken out about the case again on February 2 hoping to get more attention to it. The revelation that a suspect was in custody in the high-profile slaying emerged on February 4.
The suspect was identified as Chanel Lewis, 20, and he was criminally charged. You can read more about Lewis here.
Karina, 30, was brutally murdered when she went on an August 2 early evening jog near her Howard Beach home through a grassy marshland area. She was battered, with her teeth knocked out, and the killer’s hand imprint on her neck, said The New York Post.
Vetrano’s parents previously caused speculation when they said New York police were close to catching their daughter’s killer. But that was months before.
The police commissioner denied on August 18 that police were closing in on the person who murdered Karina. On August 31, though, police released a sketch of a man they said they want to talk to in the slaying. It’s not clear whether the suspect in custody has any relation to that sketch.
Robert Boyce, the chief of detectives for the NYPD, released the sketch on August 31. See it here:
We are seeking to speak to the male in this sketch about the murder of #KarinaVetrano. Please call #800577TIPS
Boyce said the unidentified man was not a suspect or person of interest at this time in the slaying of the Queens jogger. However, he wrote on Twitter that police want to talk to the man.
“We are seeking to speak to the male in this sketch about the murder of #KarinaVetrano. Please call #800577TIPS,” he wrote.
The New York Daily News said the man, “who is not believed to be the killer, was seen coming out of the weeds at Spring Creek Park near the Belt Parkway around the time Vetrano was killed on August 2.” PIX 11 says a utility worker described him to police.
Phil Vetrano, a retired New York firefighter who found his daughter’s body, and his wife, Cathy, gave a news conference outside their home on August 18. The parents told the news media it was “just a matter of days” before Karina’s killer was caught, said PIX 11. Phil Vetrano had also said that police were looking for a frequent jogger in the park who had stopped jogging, but police say they have identified that man, and he is not involved, according to The New York Daily News (that man is not the same man as the person in the sketch).
Karina Vetrano’s parents indicate they are aware of person of interest in jogger’s slaying t.co/A5nxQj06Af
Police had said they have DNA in the case.
Phil told The New York Daily News on August 18, “There is progress in the case. We have a number of very, very strong leads and there are a few suspects that are very interesting to the police.”
A photo of Phil Vetrano and Karina that he posted on Facebook. (Facebook/Phil Vetrano)
According to The New York Post, Phil also said: “We know there is a family member of the killer that we need for them to come forward, to finalize this very quickly. She is in great distress. We know she wants to make that call. Make that call. The [reward] money is there. I guarantee the money. If she waits any longer, someone else is going to claim that fund. The time is now to make that call and get that money.”
Police Commissioner William Bratton doused the speculation at a different event that day.
Bratton said: “We have no suspects. We’re not close to an arrest. I certainly feel for the family, this young woman, that they would like a resolution to the grief they’re feeling, but we can’t provide that at this time.”
On August 17, police said in a news conference that they were shifting their focus to Brooklyn and western Spring Creek park because they have not found helpful video footage of the killer elsewhere, according to Newsday. Police also said they received about 70 tips, and “about a dozen are still open and under investigation,” said Newsday.
Karina and Phil Vetrano. (Instagram)
AM New York said police say they “spoke to several people involved in her personal life, including an ex-boyfriend, who is not a suspect. Investigators also reviewed surveillance video in the area, but ‘haven’t found any video evidence at all to show anybody lingering.'”
The day before their recent comments, Karina’s parents made an unusual offer to the killer: They said his family could have the more than $260,000 they have raised in reward money through a Go Fund Me account if the killer confesses.
Vanessa Marcotte, left, was remembered by friends as a positive and friendly young woman. Authorities in Massachusetts said there was nothing to connect the two deaths at this point. (Instagram/Vanessa Marcotte)
Karina is the second east coast jogger murdered in about a week’s span in August. Police had a person of interest and DNA in the case of murdered jogger Vanessa Marcotte, a Google employee from New York who was slain when she went jogging near her mother’s home in Princeton, Massachusetts. However, police have also made no arrest in that case.
