PHOTO: The Karina Vetrano Reward Fund has raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars in a week. Courtesy of GoFundMe
By Michael V. Cusenza
As the Karina Vetrano Memorial Reward Fund vaulted over the $250,000 mark, the dogged detectives working the brutal slay case have “pivoted” to the Brooklyn side of the federal green space in which the jogger’s body was found two weeks ago, according NYPD brass.
Karina Vetrano, 30, was beaten, strangled, and sexually assaulted in the evening hours of Aug. 2 on her daily run inside Spring Creek Park.
Though the number of tips that police have received has climbed to nearly 75 – 10 to 12 of which are still being vetted – investigators have not identified any suspects or persons of interest in the homicide that has left Howard Beach shaken.
On Wednesday, NYPD Chief of Detectives Bob Boyce indicated that since gumshoes had, for all intents and purposes, come up empty in the area near the marsh where Vetrano’s battered body was discovered, they have shifted their focus to the Brooklyn side of the border, to places like Erskine Street and spots around the Belt Parkway, a Newsday report noted.
“We have not found any video footage of this perpetrator entering [the park] or leaving, for that matter, on the Howard Beach side,” Boyce said in the story. “So we have done a pivot to the west to see exactly that area of Brooklyn.”
Also on Wednesday, Karina’s father, Philip, announced on the GoFundMe page that is hosting the reward fund that it has been officially renamed the Karina Vetrano Memorial Foundation with a not-for-profit designation.
“The reward is and always [will] be $100,000.00 plus 25 K offered by the Police,” Philip Vetrano wrote at gofundme.com/2javwd7g. “As I mentioned on the news, if YOU THE KILLER turns himself in, I guarantee you anyone you choose will get that money. Your mother, grandmother, sister, ANYONE YOU CHOOSE.”
michael@theforumnewsgroup.com
