The temperature in New York City peaked at 85 degrees the day Moises Rodriguez’s friends last saw him.
He’d been staying at an AirBnB in the Rockaways. That evening, he waded into the ocean.
Just after midnight the next morning, cops responding to a 911 call found the 30-year-old army veteran floating in the ocean. Rodriguez had become the sixth person to die at a New York City beach this summer. A seventh person drowned on Aug. 14. It was the most drownings at city beaches since 2019.
A Gothamist analysis of city data found that six of the seven drowning victims this summer lived in districts where fewer than half of residents have access to swimming facilities within 15 minutes by public transit. One of those drowning victims, Christian Perkins, lived in a district without a beach or public New York city pool. Nearly 2 million New Yorkers live in such districts, which amount to swimming deserts.
Only 30% of people in New York City live within a 15-minute transit ride to a city beach or pool, according to city data. That lack of easy access means people must go out of their way to learn to swim, according to Shawn Slevin of the Swim Strong Foundation.
“Going to swimming lessons … It’s not as easy as it would be to throw on a pair of sneakers and go down to the corner and shoot some hoops,” ” Slevin said. “From a young parent’s point of view. It’s a lot of stuff and if you have to travel by public transportation, that even adds another layer of challenge.”
She said that more pools would mean less drownings at city beaches, which she called “the strongest, most dangerous type of water.”
“To not have accessibility, equitable access, safe access to the water, is criminal,” Slevin said.
Like four other victims this summer, Rodriguez did not know how to swim, his mother said.
Rodriguez grew up in Washington Heights and attended the now-closed St. Agnes Catholic Boys High School on the Upper West Side. The school did not have a swimming facility. Less than half of the people living in the community district where Rodriguez grew up had access to a swimming facility by way of a transit ride of 15 minutes or less, according to city data.
Moises’ mother, Mildred Rodriguez, said he only went swimming on special occasions.
“Only when we went for vacation or we went to the beach, you know, family reunion and stuff like that,” Mildred Rodriguez said.
Since the pandemic, the city has struggled with a lifeguard shortage.
When Chandler, 17, and Elyjha Perkins, 16, drowned at Jacob Riis Park, lifeguards had finished work for the day. Only one drowning this summer happened while lifeguards were on duty.
After Rodriguez died, Mayor Eric Adams extended lifeguards’ hours at a few city beaches. Gov. Kathy Hochul joined Adams in committing $46 million to build modern swimming facilities in the Bronx and Rockaways.
Parks department officials say they had as many as 930 lifeguards watching over city pools and beaches this summer – an improvement over previous years. The city won more control over lifeguard training, loosening the grip of its union leadership and increasing pay for lifeguards.
But Moises’ grieving mother says more could potentially be done to limit access to beaches during off-hours.
“I know he wasn’t responsible for doing that, to go to the beach that late,” she said. “But you know, I think they should have [no] access to the public, late at night.
“It happened to my son, it could happen to somebody else,” Rodriguez said.