Investigators have identified the body found in Gerritsen Beach Sunday morning as Shaniesha Forbes, a 14-year-old girl who attended the Academy for Young Writers in East New York. Forbes had been reported missing two days before her burned body was found next to an extinguished bonfire on a beach in Marine Park, near Gerritsen and Lois Avenues. “She was naked,” a law-enforcement source tells the Post. “She was burned. She was [partly] buried in the sand. It looks bad."
The cause of death is still under investigation, but investigators tell the Daily News they do not believe the fire killed her because there was no smoke in her lungs and the burns were not life-threatening. There are apparently no other signs of trauma. An empty container of kerosene and discarded beer containers were found near the remains of the bonfire.
Forbes, whose uncle is an NYPD sergeant, lived with her family on Avenue I in East Flatbush, about four miles from where her body was found. Her family says she'd run away from home before, and a classmate tells the Post that Forbes was bullied at school. “Almost every day in science class, they would ask her the same questions... like why she would wear the same weave over and over again," says friend Tanasha Searls.
And Forbes's cousin Keri Ann Thomas tells the Times she believes Forbes was murdered. "She was 14 years old; she was just a child," says Thomas. "We are devastated right now. No one thinks this will happen to their family." But Thomas, the Times reports, "would not say when or under what circumstances the family last saw her."
