Police: Construction crooner found dead in apparent suicide
NEW YORK – A karaoke-loving ironworker who briefly became a New York sensation for his serenades from a subway construction site has been found dead in an apparent suicide, two months after he disappeared from his Queens neighborhood, police said Friday.
Four years after Gary Russo’s brush with fame, the “Second Avenue Sinatra” vanished without a trace after leaving his home shortly after midnight on July 28.
On Friday, a passer-by discovered Russo’s body hanging from a tree in a park strewn with reeds in the outer-city neighborhood of Howard Beach.
Police suspect the 54-year-old died in a suicide. The city’s medical examiner will determine his cause of death.
Russo was helping build the future Second Avenue subway under Manhattan’s Upper East Side in late July 2011 when he used his lunch breaks to try something he yearned to do: sing in public.
Within weeks, Russo was featured on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and was declared “The Best New Thing in the World Today” by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.