Dead Woman Found in Lower East Side Park, Murder Suspected

Tragedy came to little-known but much-loved Luther Gulick Park on the Lower East Side on Sunday morning, Nov. 16, when a dead woman was found there. Murder is suspected.

At approximately 7:43 a.m., police responded to a 911 call of a female in need of aid, possibly dead, in the vicinity of Broome and Columbia streets, within the confines of the 7th Precinct.

Upon arrival, officers observed an unidentified adult female unconscious and unresponsive, lying on the sidewalk, with head trauma.

EMS responded and pronounced the female deceased on scene. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death, and the investigation remains ongoing.

Luther Gulick Park lies in the southern shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge; its borders are Bialystock Place on the west, Columbia Street on the east, Broome Street on the south, and Delancey Street on the north.

The park was the beneficiary of a $9.9-million renovation in 2020 and, remarkably, it still looks it. The children’s playground is very nice, there are ping-pong tables, some exercise equipment, handball and basketball courts and, for its relatively small, flat space, some well-considered landscaping—all of which, together, makes the discovery of the dead woman that much more shocking.

Photographs of the park taken that Sunday morning show NYPD Crime Scene Unit officers studying the benches adjacent to the handball courts and carrying away a blue suitcase away in clear plastic bag.

It’s unclear what, if any, correlation the suitcase has to the deceased.

Built on the site of the former R.H. Hoe printing-press factory, the park opened in 1933 as the Bernard Downing Playground. In 1985, it was renamed Luther Halsey Gulick Jr. (1865-1918) and his nephew, Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick (1892-1993).

The elder Gulick was an educator, reformer, and community leader remembered both as the “Godfather of Basketball” and as the founder the still-ongoing Public School Athletic League (PSAL).

The most recent high-profile crime to occur in this vicinity, which includes cooperative housing to the south and NYCHA Baruch Houses projects on the other side of the Delancey, was the February murder of 65-year-old Baruch Houses resident Edwin Echevarria.

Straus News reported this in an article headlned “Torso Murder Victim and Killer IDed; Body Parts Still Missing.” Part of the story concerned speculation of how the alleged murderer, Christian Millet, was able to hurl Echevarria’s body parts into the East River, a task more complicated than it might first seem. Millet is being held on Rikers Island without bail and his next scheduled court date is Dec. 4.

As this issue was going to press, NYPD identified the victim as Angela Bridges, 31-year-old female of 61-26 67 Street in Woodside, Queens.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crimestoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org/,or on X @NYPDTips.

All calls are strictly confidential.