‘Beautiful Soul’ Maylin Reynoso Was Found Dead In NYC — But Her Case Went Largely Ignored
The 20-year-old woman’s body was recovered from a river in Manhattan in July 2016.
Shantal Gonzales via GoFundMe
A woman’s unexplained death in New York City in 2016 received little attention and raised more questions than answers at the time for family and friends.
On July 30, 2016, the New York Police Department’s Harbor Unit received a report of a body floating in Manhattan’s Harlem River.
“Upon arriving, officers observed an unconscious and unresponsive female in the water,” the NYPD told Heavy.
The Dominican woman was pronounced dead a short time later, but it took days for her to be identified as 20-year-old Maylin Reynoso.
“There was no media coverage of her disappearance, only homemade posters on the subway that most people just walk by without bothering to look at,” a writer for Odyssey reported.
An investigation determined Reynoso was last seen on the evening of July 27 on security video at an Upper Manhattan gas station where she worked. After clocking out of her shift around 10 p.m., she left and wasn’t seen alive again.
Reynoso’s mother allegedly said her daughter, Reynoso, battled a bipolar disorder and often heard voices, the Spanish-language publication Ensegundos reported.
But questions remained about whether the avid skateboarder died from suicide, murder, or an accident — and authorities didn’t have the answers either. On Aug. 23, 2016, nearly a month after Reynoso’s body was found, the medical examiner still had not identified a cause of death, the NYPD told Heavy at the time.
Some noted part of the problem was that Reynoso’s disappearance and death went largely unreported by the media, unlike other cases in New York City — and across the country. One oft-cited example was the massive investigation into the death of 30-year-old Karina Vetrano, who was brutally raped and murdered while jogging in Queens on Aug. 2 — just days after Reynoso was found dead.
In any circumstance, “a tragedy like this, it is difficult, heartbreaking and sad,” Shantal Gonzales noted of the death of her sister who had a “beautiful soul.”
