Feb. 22, 2023 By Bill Parry
Homicide detectives are investigating the murder of a 33-year-old man who was discovered early Tuesday morning in what is left of the Iron Triangle across 127th Street from Citi Field.
Police from the 110th Precinct in Elmhurst responded to a 911 call just after midnight on Feb. 21 after the victim was discovered in the back of a vehicle parked at 127th Street and 35th Avenue. The officers found the man unconscious and unresponsive with signs of trauma around his body, police said.
EMS responded and pronounced the victim dead at the scene, according to the NYPD.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death.
An NYPD spokesman said the identification of the victim is pending family notification and there have been no arrests. The investigation remains ongoing.
The Iron Triangle is a dilapidated 6-acre location on city-owned property at Willets Point that was home to hundreds of mostly immigrant-owned auto-repair shops and scrap yards that were prone to flooding for decades due to the lack of infrastructure. Most of those businesses have been shuttered or moved to a location in the Bronx to make way for the Willets Points Redevelopment project, which broke ground in June 2021.
In November, Mayor Eric Adams presented the city’s plan for the long-stalled transformation of Willets Point that will be anchored by 2,500 affordable homes, the city’s largest 100% affordable new housing project since the 1970s. The development will include a 25,000-seat privately financed soccer stadium which will be the new home of the New York City Football Club (NYCFC) and a 250-room hotel.