{"id":115675,"date":"2026-01-28T23:05:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T23:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115675\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T23:05:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T23:05:18","slug":"a-splash-in-the-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115675\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A splash in the water’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Missing Long Island teen Thomas Medlin<\/a> was caught on surveillance video pacing the Manhattan Bridge \u2014 moments before the cameras recorded an ominous splash in the East River, Suffolk County police revealed Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Cops stopped short of saying that the 15-year-old boy from St. James \u2014 who vanished after leaving school on Jan. 9 \u2014 somehow plunged into the icy waters, but noted that the footage does not show the teen leaving the bridge.<\/p>\n

Thomas Medlin, 15, left school on Long Island on Jan. 9 and headed into Grand Central Terminal. Suffolk County Police Department<\/p>\n

Suffolk County police said Medlin was last seen on the Manhattan Bridge hours after leaving his school on Jan. 9. Deccio Serrano\/NurPhoto\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no indication of criminal activity,\u201d police said in a press release. \u201cDetectives have continuously communicated the department\u2019s findings to Medlin\u2019s family. The department is continuing to work with its law enforcement partners to bring closure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chilling new details offer the first hints of Medlin\u2019s fate since he went missing after leaving Stony Brook School, a ritzy prep school that can cost more than $70,000 for students who live on campus.<\/p>\n

Police said the teen walked off his school campus around 3:30 p.m. on the day of his disappearance and hopped on a Long Island Rail Road train to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, where he was first spotted on security cameras.<\/p>\n

According to the Suffolk County Police Department, cameras then captured the teen on the pedestrian walkway on the Manhattan Bridge at 7:06 p.m. \u2014 with his last mobile phone activity recorded at 7:09 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cA nearby surveillance camera captured a splash in the water\u201d just a minute later, at 7:10 p.m.,\u201d police said. <\/p>\n

Eva Yan told Fox & Friends this week that she wanted her son, 15-year-old Thomas Medlin, to return home. Family Handout<\/p>\n

\u201cMedlin was never seen leaving the bridge via path exits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Law enforcement sources said investigators had been pinging the boy\u2019s phone but lost contact at that time.<\/p>\n

Police initially believed Thomas Medlin was meeting a friend he met on the gaming platform Roblox. REUTERS<\/p>\n

The teen\u2019s mom, Eva Yan, pleaded on Fox & Friends<\/a> Tuesday for her son to come home, promising, \u201che\u2019s safe. Nobody\u2019s going to harm him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Investigators initially believed Medlin ventured into the city to meet someone he met through the online gaming platform Roblox, but police said they later ruled out any connection between the site and the disappearance.<\/p>\n

Roblox told The Post over that weekend that it was cooperating fully with the investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are deeply troubled by this incident and are working with law enforcement to support their investigation,\u201d a company spokesperson said in the statement.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Missing Long Island teen Thomas Medlin was caught on surveillance video pacing the Manhattan Bridge \u2014 moments before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[8108,19085,776,75,39683,84,83,57,7373,9,24,63,773],"class_list":["post-115675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-east-river","tag-investigations","tag-long-island","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-bridge","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-metro","tag-missing-persons","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-suffolk-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}