A teenager’s disturbing discovery of human remains in a quiet Long Island park could help resolve a missing-person case that has remained unsolved for nearly a year.
A local high school track team was running along trails at Plandome Pond Park in Manhasset at about 5:45 p.m. Thursday when one runner, an Eagle Scout, noticed skeletal remains in the brush, according to the Nassau County Police Department and NBC New York.
“They were running adjacent to the train tracks, and they were coming through to the park. He discovered the remains,” Plandome Heights Mayor Kenneth Riscica told the outlet.
Investigators are examining whether the remains belong to Shi Hua Xu, a 79-year-old grandmother who disappeared from her home in nearby Great Neck in December 2025.
Xu had dementia and regularly took walks around her neighborhood. She was seen walking in Great Neck before she vanished and was never seen again.
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She was not wearing her tracking device when she disappeared, and her family had been searching urgently for her ever since.
“It is a female. We are looking to positively identify the body by the end of the day. We don’t believe it to be criminal in nature,” Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder told the outlet.
According to the report, Xu’s family positively identified an item of clothing recovered at the scene as belonging to her.
The medical examiner’s office is awaiting DNA test results to confirm the body’s identity.
Although the discovery was deeply unsettling, the teenager told detectives he was “doing fine” and hoped it would provide closure for the missing woman’s family.
“When the detectives asked him how he was doing, his response was ‘I’m doing fine. I only hope this brings closure to a family that lost someone’,” Riscica said.
