UPPER EAST SIDE — A second body in two days was pulled from a lake in a Central Park Wednesday morning, NYPD officials said.
The partially decomposed body of a shirtless man in his 20s or 30s was found by park staff in The Pond, near Fifth Avenue and East 59th Street, about 7:20 a.m., an NYPD spokesman said.
The man, who had an ID on him but whose name police didn't immediately release, may have been in the water for one or two weeks, according to Robert Boyce, the NYPD's chief of detectives.
The man's eye was damaged by "obviously turtles or some wildlife," but didn't have any other signs of trauma, Boyce said.
Investigators don't suspect any criminality was involved in his death, but they still don't know how he got there, Boyce said. The Medical Examiner will determine how the man died.
Police taped off a large swath of the park as they investigated Wednesday morning.
The grim discovery comes a morning after another badly decomposed body of a naked man was found in the park's reservoir, police said.
The circumstances of that unidentified man's death were also unclear, but Boyce said the body had been there for about a month.
There was nothing to indicate that the two deaths were related, police said.
"It is unusual for this park," Boyce said. "You have to go back two years to find a body recovered in the park."
Parkgoers were shocked by the gruesome news.
"This is something you'd expect to see on 'Law & Order,' not in Central Park," said Jessica Bowen, 34.
"It definitely changes my perspective on safety in the area. I'm horrified."
