Frigid weather, alcohol and drugs proved to be a fatal combination for a number of people found dead outdoors during New York’s continuing deep freeze as the city prepares for two more days of record low temperatures, officials said Saturday.
Releasing autopsy findings for five people found dead outside between Jan. 24 and Jan. 26, the city’s Medical Examiner’s Office determined that “hypothermia due to environmental cold exposure” was the root cause of their deaths.
Alcohol abuse was a contributing factor in three of those deaths. Use of methamphetamines was a factor in a fourth, said the ME’s office, which has not released what killed 12 other people found dead outdoors during the cold snap.
As of Friday, the city’s cold-weather death toll remained at 17.
The release of these findings comes as the city prepares for one of the coldest days of the year. Temperatures in New York on Saturday are expected to drop to a low of five degrees, but with the wind, it will feel like 10 below, said Mayor Mamdani.
“These will be lethal conditions,” the mayor said at a weather briefing Friday afternoon. “Being outside for even a short period of time could pose a severe risk.”
Jan. 24 was the day before a massive snowstorm heralded in historic low temperatures that New Yorkers continue to suffer through.
The hypothermia deaths include an unidentified methamphetamine user found unconscious on Jerome Ave. outside Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx; a 52-year-old man found unconscious in the Junction Playground near the corner of 96th St. and 34th Ave. in Jackson Heights, Queens; a 64-year-old woman found dead on Remsen Ave. near Glenwood Road in Canarsie; a 60-year-old man found outside St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx; and a 67-year-old man found dead on Third Ave. near E. 36th St. in Murray Hill.
All of the deaths are considered “accidental,” officials said.
The city has not released the names of the victims nor any other details in the last seven deaths.
Of the first 10 victims, at least six had had interaction with the city’s Department of Homeless Services in the past, officials said.
On Friday, Mayor Mamdani said the city was pulling out all the stops to pull as many people as possible out of the dangerously chilly elements this weekend, including enlisting the help of school nurses, business improvement districts and the formerly homeless in outreach efforts.
Outreach teams have placed more than 1,250 people into shelters and involuntarily transported 27 people off the streets over the last three weeks, Mamdani said.
The city is also expanding its efforts to open up new places in which people can take refuge, according to Mamdani. That includes 65 new hotel shelter units and 62 heated vehicles, plus 10 public schools, two CUNY centers and two overdose prevention centers to be used as warming centers.
“We want every New Yorker who needs help seeking warmth to be able to find it,” Mamdani said.
“Extreme Cold” warnings went into effect for New York City beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday and were expected to continue to 1 p.m. Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
With Rocco Parascandola
