Samantha Humphrey Update: Police Retrieve Body From River Near Area Where Teen Went Missing

The New York authorities have reportedly pulled out a body from the Mohawk River on Wednesday during their search for Samantha Humphrey, a 14-year-old, who vanished two months ago.

The authorities are now trying to determine if the corpse is that of the missing teenager.

An autopsy of the body was performed Thursday, according to WNYT. However, the news outlet said, the police didn't plan to release the results until Monday.

The remains were spotted at around 2:37 p.m. in the Mohawk River in Schenectady by an unidentified person fishing in an area by River Street, WRGB reported. The state police airboat crew then pulled out the body around 4:00 p.m. ET.

The discovery came after multiple search operations in the area, ever since the teen disappeared on Nov. 25, 2022, People reported.

Humphrey was last seen in the area of Riverside Park in the Stockade neighborhood. 11:30 p.m. ET on Nov. 25, according to a Facebook post by the Schenectady Police Department. She was spotted in surveillance footage that was captured shortly before midnight on Nov. 25. A jacket matching the description of the one she was last known wearing was found near the river, triggering immediate search efforts for the teen in the area centered around the river.

Following her disappearance, a combined search effort was launched by the State Police Aviation Unit and Dive team.

Schenectady Police Chief Eric Clifford told the media in a briefing Wednesday that the body seemed to have been in the river for a while, but failed to give the exact timeline.

The police cordoned off areas ranging from Front Street Park to the Union College Boathouse east through the west end of ALCO Heritage Trail. Clifford said they couldn't definitively identify the body as Humphrey's, and weren't associating the discovery with her missing case just yet.

"Right now, I cannot confirm who it is. I cannot confirm the sex of the person in the river, I can just that it is a person that we pulled out of the river," said Clifford, according to WRGB.

On being asked whether the police notified Humphrey's family, Clifford said: "We don't know the identity of the person in the water, so the answer is not at this point."

"I don't really want to put that connection together. I know that's what everybody is thinking right now. It's just too premature for that to happen. We hope that we'll have information tomorrow."