{"id":258512,"date":"2026-06-07T21:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T21:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/258512\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T21:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T21:34:08","slug":"some-nyc-death-jetties-finally-set-for-removal-this-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/258512\/","title":{"rendered":"Some NYC ‘death’ jetties finally set for removal this fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer will mark the seventh that John Munoz\u2019s kin will spend without the beloved teen \u2014 while the dilapidated jetties they say killed him will continue to dot Rockaway Beach.<\/a><\/p>\n

The 70-year-old \u201cdeath\u201d pilings are finally on track to be removed starting in November, but that\u2019s two months after lifeguards hang up their suits for another season \u2014 and years too late, according to the grieving family.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m deeply saddened it\u2019s taken this long for them to remove [them],\u201d said Yenesnia Rodriguez, Munoz\u2019s sister, to The Post.<\/p>\n

Such \u201cdeadly\u201d wooden jetties throughout Rockaway Beach could be removed in November. Helayne Seidman<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family and I have always heard the stories of Rockaways claiming lives<\/a>, so we always knew how dangerous it was,\u201d she said. \u201cBut until it hits you, you don\u2019t realize how dangerous it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe jetties have always been a hazard \u2014 even before I was around. Until this day is still a hazard.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US Army Corps of Engineers is now finally drafting fresh plans to remove the structures \u2014 among 19 clusters of jetties along the Queens shoreline \u2014 as part of the Rockaway Crossovers Construction Contract, which is similar to another proposal that had been dragging on for years.<\/p>\n

The corps first sought to rip out the wooden planks in 2020 as part of a different beachfront project but disastrously stuck itself wth contractors who \u201cnever got to\u201d the dangerous pilings, said city Councilwoman Joann Ariola, calling the previous plan a \u201cbureaucratic nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

The military expects to begin seeking new crews for the work in October, with the city Parks Department footing the bill, the agencies said.<\/p>\n

John Munoz, 18, drowned after slipping from a jetty in July 2019. Courtesy The Munoz Family<\/p>\n

If all goes well, the work will begin as soon as November, Ariola said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides the riptide and any type of shark attack, [the jetties are] probably one of the most dangerous parts of the water that can take the lives of swimmers and our surfers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey become submerged when the tide comes in, and you cannot see them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republican pol said the new plan is a \u201cpositive\u201d but that news of it is little consolation to the families who have lost their loved ones in the surf.<\/p>\n

Mumoz, 18, was just one of many drownings at Rockaway Beach that has been linked to the jetties, critics said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe jetties have always been a hazard,\u201d said Munoz\u2019s sister, Yesenia Rodriguez. Helayne Seidman<\/p>\n

The teen was sitting on a jetty there with friends in July 2019 when he slipped into the rough waters and vanished.<\/p>\n

His official cause of death was accidental drowning, but his sister said his body was covered in trauma marks from the pilings.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The jetty] hit him, and he knocked out, and he drowned right there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt never goes away,\u201d Rodriguez said of the loss. \u201cYou take a day by day, and you learn to deal with the pain, carry him in our hearts.<\/p>\n

\u201cA piece of us died with him, and we had to start a new life without him. Even after he passed away, I just kept hearing stories,\u201d the sibling said. \u201cIt\u2019s now seven years he\u2019s been gone. And it took them seven years to finally say, \u2018Hey, maybe this is not a good idea.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Sebasti\u00e1n Lasaosa Rogers died last summer after the leash of his board was caught on an old jetty. Sebasti\u00e1n Lasaosa Rogers\/Facebook<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t take a chance with Rockaway. That\u2019s the lesson I learned from there,\u201d she said. \u201cConey Island, even with the strongest waves, is still safe compared to Rockaway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last summer, surfer Sebasti\u00e1n Lasaosa Rogers was killed by the jetties in Riis Park in the Rockaways when the leash of his board got tangled in the decrepit wooden jetties.<\/p>\n

Two other surfers succumbed to similar fates in 2009 and 2010.<\/p>\n

Despite the renewed efforts to remove the deadly jetties, neighbors remain skeptical the plan will come to fruition as soon as November.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would be miraculously fast given our experience thus far,\u201d said Paul King, the president of the Belle Harbor Property Owners Association, which has been pleading for their removal for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t one of those things where we\u2019re like, \u2018If this pothole doesn\u2019t get fixed, someone could die in an accident.\u2019 We\u2019ve already had death after death. This is a real urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This summer will mark the seventh that John Munoz\u2019s kin will spend without the beloved teen \u2014 while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4174,7631,11648,57,9,197,56,63,65,64,294,23565,58],"class_list":["post-258512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-army-corps-of-engineers","tag-beaches","tag-drownings","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city-life","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-rockaway-beach","tag-rockaways","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258512","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=258512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}