The death toll from the city’s brutal cold spell climbed to 18 over the weekend — with a shell-shocked shelter worker stumbling upon the latest fatality of the historic freeze, he told The Post.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed the 18th outdoor death Monday morning, during an unrelated press conference celebrating the opening of the Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center in Brooklyn.
The death toll for those outside during NYC’s deep freeze has reached 18, according to Mayor Mamdani. REUTERS“Each loss of life is a tragedy. We will continue to hold their families in our thoughts,” he said.
The latest person to die was an 86-year-old homeless man, later identified as Charles Williams, according to sources and City Hall officials. His body was found just after 9 a.m. Saturday on the street at East Gun Hill Road and Seymour Avenue in The Bronx.
Adam Faad, 26, said he felt helpless after finding the unresponsive man on the sidewalk.
Faad, a security worker at a homeless shelter who was volunteering at one of the city’s “warming centers” on Saturday, said he spotted the man, who looked asleep, on the street while on his way to his mosque.
He doubled back after prayers and called 911 when he noticed the man wasn’t breathing.
Temperatures in the Big Apple hit a 20-year low over the weekend, sinking into the single digits. James Keivom“I say maybe he’s just sleeping. But it was cold, freezing outside,” Faad recalled in an interview on Monday.
“I feel bad because I’m on my way to help homeless people, and I find this guy, and I couldn’t help him.”
It marked the latest tragic death from the weekslong deep freeze that saw temperatures plummet to below -15 degrees with the brutal wind chill this past weekend.
Leading into the coldest few nights of the year, Mamdani had faced calls to do more to get homeless people to safety inside — voluntarily or unwillingly — as reports emerged of snafus with the city’s mobile warming centers.
Adam Faad, 26, said he felt helpless after finding the unresponsive man on the sidewalk. William MillerThe more than a dozen buses meant to help people warm up were scattered across the city, oftentimes not located where they were supposed to be or difficult to track down.
And even when the warming buses were parked where the city said they would be, there was little to no signage pointing freezing New Yorkers to their location.
“I gave Mamdani administration an A for intent but a C for implementation,” said civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who has been volunteering to help homeless New Yorkers on the cold nights.
“The warming buses, they change it each day, and it makes no sense.”
Then over the weekend, city workers started to bar reporters from entering or observing the warming centers.
