Army Veteran Drowns in Rockaway Beach

Rockaway has had another drowning. In the late-night hours, on Monday, July 22 at 12:30 a.m., first responders recovered the body of a 30-year-old man after responding to a 911 call from concerned bystanders who saw him floating around Beach 96th Street.

CPR was performed and the man was transported to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The man has since been identified as Moises Rodriguez. According to the NY Daily News, who spoke with his grieving mother, Rodriguez was discharged from the U.S. Army in 2018, and suffered from PTSD, bipolar disorder and alcohol issues. She does not believe he intended to die when he went to the beach on Sunday. Several videos posted by Rodriguez to his social media pages seem to suggest the same as he smiled while enjoying the beach and water earlier in the day. He had posted several videos around Rockaway and on the beach in recent weeks after moving to the peninsula a few weeks prior. Rodriguez has a four-year-old daughter who lives with her mother in Alabama.

This marks the third drowning death in Rockaway this summer, after the death of teenagers Elyjha Chandler and Christian Perkins, who drowned off of Riis Park in June, and the fifth for New York City, with the drowning of two teenagers off of Coney Island earlier this month.

Please do not go in the water when lifeguards are not present. Lifeguards are on duty daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.