Just over a year ago, 27-year-old Hoboken resident Andrew Jarzyk disappeared while jogging on the Hoboken waterfront, stunning his family and friends and drawing the attention of the local community. The discovery of his body floating in an abandoned ferry slip south of the Hoboken train terminal approximately a month later brought a tragic conclusion to the search for his whereabouts, but only inspired further speculation as to how Jarzyk had ended up in the Hudson River in the first place.
While the exact circumstances of Jarzyk’s drowning may never be known definitively, state medical examiner reports obtained by The Hudson Reporter uncovered no evidence of injury or foul play on Jarzyk’s body, and suggested that alcohol intoxication may have played a key role in his drowning. Investigation reports provided by the Hoboken Police Department indicated similar circumstances.
No evidence of foul play
The disappearance of Jarzyk, a well-loved young Hobokenite who worked at PNC Financial Services in Manhattan and was training for a half-marathon, shocked many in Hoboken, where violent crime rates are low and missing persons are a rarity.
After drinking at a west Hoboken nightclub with friends and family on the night of March 29, 2014, Jarzyk went for a run along the Hudson River waterfront. He was last seen on the surveillance video of a Sinatra Drive restaurant entering Pier A Park early on the morning of March 30. No video was ever uncovered of Jarzyk leaving the pier.
Police from Hoboken, Jersey City, and New York City conducted extensive searches in the Hudson River in the days after Jarzyk’s disappearance, but his body was not found until April 28, when a passerby spotted something floating in the Long Slip Canal south of Hoboken Terminal.
Speculation of foul play abounded at the time, especially in light of an incident earlier that March, in which a Wharton, N.J. man told the Hoboken police that he had been thrown into the Hudson River by three assailants dressed in black. The man held onto a metal pylon near Pier C Park until police were alerted and rescued him.
However, police later said they could not corroborate the man’s story, and the man refused to talk to them when they followed up.
An autopsy of Jarzyk’s body by the Northern Regional Medical Examiner Office in Newark found no evidence of external injuries to his hands, abdomen, chest, back, or head, according to a report obtained via an Open Public Records Act request. After a postmortem examination conducted on April 29, 2014, medical examiner Di Wang, M.D. pronounced Jaryzk’s death to be an accidental drowning, with “ethanol toxicity” as a contributing cause.
An analysis of Jarzyk’s bodily fluid samples by the State Toxicology Laboratory revealed a .205 percent concentration of ethanol in his femoral blood, more than twice the legal limit when operating a motor vehicle in New Jersey. Urine recovered from Jarzyk’s kidney contained an even higher alcohol concentration of .293 percent.
According to a chart produced by the University of Rochester, the level of alcohol concentration found in Jarzyk’s blood is associated with loss of depth perception and moderate to severe motor impairment, but not with a significant risk of alcohol poisoning.
The entirety of the waterfront around Pier A and the Hoboken Terminal is inscribed with a three-foot tall railing. Heavy rain had fallen for much of March 29 and continued to fall into March 30, suggesting that Jarzyk, who was just over six feet tall, could have slipped and fallen over the railing.
Retracing Jarzyk’s final hours
On the evening of Saturday, March 29, Jarzyk was enjoying a night out with friends at West Five Supper Club on Madison Street in western Hoboken. At around 1 a.m. on March 30, he left the restaurant and nightclub and returned to his nearby apartment.
According to media reports, Jarzyk told his friends he would return, but evidently changed his mind and decided to go for a run.
It appears that Jarzyk was able to enter his apartment initially, as his body was clad in running clothes when it was found. However, his roommate told police he believed Jarzyk had been locked out at some point, according to an investigation report provided by the Hoboken Police Department.
The roommate found the front door of the apartment chained from the inside, according to the report, but Jarzyk’s bedroom had its own door that led to the backyard. At around 1:30 a.m., a man living in a nearby home heard something in his backyard and observed Jarzyk on top of his rear shed, according to an account given to police. The neighbor said Jarzyk fell off of the shed, a roughly 15-foot drop, after which the two “had some words,” according to the police report.
The neighbor told police that he “physically dragged [Jarzyk] by the collar” out of the backyard, through his garage, and on to the sidewalk. According to the report, Jarzyk “appeared highly intoxicated and very apologetic.”
Jarzyk’s last known communication with another person was a text message sent to his girlfriend at around 1:43 a.m., saying he missed her.
At some point, Jarzyk departed on his planned run. Footage from security cameras at two waterfront restaurants showed him running southward past Pier C Park at around 2:09 a.m., then entering Pier A Park.
The city has its own surveillance cameras, two of which are located on the waterfront, but as the investigation revealed, none of them were turned on that night. That factor drew some criticism for City Hall, which had declined to renew a contract with the company running the cameras. Last year, the city bought eight new waterfront cameras with a state grant, but they too remain non-operational due to technical issues.
When Jarzyk’s parents spoke to police the following afternoon, they said his phone had “turned off sometime during the early morning hours.”
According to a post by someone claiming to know Jarzyk personally on an internet sleuthing forum called Websleuths, his cellphone stopped ringing at 2:45 a.m.
Added security measures
Since Jarzyk’s disappearance, the city of Hoboken has taken several steps that it hopes will decrease or discourage incidences of drowning in the Hudson River.
The most visible change is the installation of orange signs on the waterfront warning visitors of the powerful Hudson River currents.
Where it passes Hoboken, the Hudson’s flow is fully dictated by the tides of the Atlantic Ocean, and the current they generate can reach three miles per hour and change direction rapidly.
In addition, all Hoboken police vehicles are now equipped with special water rescue throw bags containing 75 feet of buoyant rope, according to Chief Ken Ferrante.
That includes the two Jeeps assigned to a newly created waterfront detail, which began patrolling on Jan. 1. One of the core initiatives introduced by Ferrante when he took over as chief in December, the unit will cover the waterfront seven days a week from 8 a.m. to midnight, mostly on bicycles and on foot.
While the patrols are geared towards preventing illegal activity by juveniles and the homeless population and restoring a feeling of safety to the waterfront, according to Ferrante, the officers will be well placed to spot individuals who have fallen or jumped into the Hudson.
The last piece of the puzzle is getting the city’s waterfront cameras turned on. After Jarzyk’s disappearance, an NBC investigative report revealed that the municipal surveillance system had been out of operation since at least 2010. City spokesman Juan Melli said a state-appointed monitor told the city in 2009 that the contract to operate the cameras had been procured improperly.
Hoboken used a federal grant to order eight new cameras for the waterfront last summer, but they have yet to be turned on due to technical issues. The cameras relay video back to the Hoboken Police Department wirelessly, said Public Safety Director Jon Tooke, and a wireless repeater was failing to register all of the cameras’ signals in its original location.
According to Tooke, the city has found a new operable location on top of a building and is in ongoing negotiations with the building’s owner.
Tooke would not give an expected date for the project’s completion, but said the remaining installation work is fairly cursory.
Memorial planned for Jarzyk
A group of Jarzyk’s close friends and family have organized a Memorial Foundation “to help support various communities & initiatives that embody the values he exhibited throughout his life.” The Andrew Jarzyk Memorial Foundation will host its first annual golf outing this coming Sept. 28 at the Mercer Oaks Golf Course in Princeton Junction, N.J.
The Hoboken Reporter reached out to Jarzyk’s former girlfriend and brother, but was unable to interview either as of press time.
Carlo Davis may be reached at cdavis@hudsonreporter.com.