By Jerry Burke
At first, the retired firefighter thought it was a rolled-up carpet, but upon closer inspection, he realized something was wrong. "Well, the shape of the object, you know, it looked like it could be [a body]," said Herman. "I happened to touch it with my foot. It looked real suspicious. It felt like something was in there."
Herman was right. He called the police at 7:46 a.m., and within a few minutes there was a full-blown crime scene along his quiet Elmont block.
Wrapped up in a plaid blanket, police found the body of a man, whom officials had not identified as of Monday afternoon. Police said the victim's body was wrapped in the blanket and then bound with nylon cord, his head covered with a plastic bag. A small splattering of blood was found on the west side of the street near where the body was found, but police do not believe the man was killed there.
"This particular block is on the corner of an auto-parts store, which would have been pretty busy yesterday," said a Nassau County Police Department spokesman, Detective Lt. Kevin Smith, on Monday. "At 100 feet off the curb, it would have been seen if it was there during the day. We believe it was probably [left there] sometime during the night."
Smith said that the 6-foot-tall body is most likely that of a white male. "It was wrapped pretty tightly with white nylon cord," said Smith, adding that the plastic mesh sack covering the head was similar to those used to hold fertilizer or seed. Smith said that police believe the body was probably dumped on the curb near the edge of Herman's driveway, roughly 100 feet south of Hempstead Turnpike, sometime late Saturday night or very early Sunday morning.
Smith believes that whoever left the body was not trying especially hard to hide it. The body was taken to the Nassau Medical Examiner's office on Sunday to determine the cause of death and identity. As of Monday afternoon, a spokesman for the medical examiner said the autopsy was still in progress, but described the body as "severely bruised."
Police are hoping that a surveillance camera mounted at a business across Hempstead Turnpike and facing Clement Avenue may provide some clues, including a more accurate time frame during which the body may have been dumped.
One neighbor, David Feldmann, said he drove down the block at about 1:30 a.m. on Sunday on his way home from his sanitation job in Queens. "I didn't see anything," Feldmann said. "I was pretty shocked when I looked out my window and saw it there with all these cops around."
Police are asking residents who may have seen anything out of the ordinary along Hempstead Turnpike either late Saturday night or before 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning to call Crimestoppers at (800) 244-TIPS. All calls will remain anonymous.
Comments about this story? JBurke@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 234.
