A 17-year-old highschool senior left a goodbye observe on Instagram and stated farewell to his mates through group textual content earlier than leaping off the Staten Island Ferry, his distraught sister stated Sunday.
The NYPD has been looking out the waters of New York Harbor for Brandon Pino since he jumped about 9:45 a.m. on Saturday because the ferry approached the southern tip of Manhattan, cops stated.
“We’re doing our own search with family members. We are going along Jersey City, Battery Park, Brooklyn, just looking around the borders,” stated Cathleen, 27, including that she hasn’t gotten any updates from authorities. “We’ve gone on Governors Island yesterday and we’re doing it again today.”
Brandon, a senior at Gaynor McCown Expeditionary Studying Faculty on Staten Island, went to his uncle’s home on Staten Island about 7 a.m. on Saturday, then headed for the 9:30 a.m. boat from the St. George Ferry Terminal, not telling anybody, his sister stated.
“He had posted on his Instagram,” she stated. “It was saying, ‘My last day on Earth.’ And then he also made a post about mental health awareness. Hashtag mental health awareness,” his sister stated.
He was texting a gaggle of mates, who began getting more and more anxious, simply earlier than he jumped overboard, she stated. A witness notified the ferry crew after it docked in Manhattan, she stated.
Police searched the waters, however referred to as off the search at about 6 p.m., the sister stated.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Every day Information
Search crews reply after Brandon Pino, 17, jumped off the Staten Island ferry on Saturday. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Every day Information)
Brandon lived along with his mother and two older sisters in Port Richmond, and his nieces and nephews appeared as much as him due to his dedication to health.
“His friends told me that they had seen that he was more happy than usual at school lately,” Cathleen stated. “And it seems very odd because he was being himself, which was eating, cooking for himself, cooking his healthy food, going to the gym, going to school early, being there for his graduation practice.”
Nonetheless, she stated, his mates stated he’d specific worries about his physique, “to be a certain weight or look a specific way.”
One among his classmates had just lately died by suicide, she added.
“We want help to see if there can be more attention, so to see if they can actually do at least a recovery, for my mom to get some type of closure, so she can bury her son,” she stated.
Initially Printed: June 1, 2025 at 5:18 PM EDT
