Drone Video Shows Mass Grave On NYC’s Hart Island

The New York Post reports:

Disturbing new drone video shows a crew of city inmates in protective gear burying coffins in a mass grave on Hart Island — where the city says it may bury the mounting dead from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The newly released footage, shot Thursday, shows more than a half-dozen white-clad prisoners lower wooden coffins into the ground, then stand by as a bulldozer and backhoe dump mounds of dirt on at least 20 of the boxes, which are lined up at the end of a long trench.

Burials are a common sight on the island, where the city has used inmates to inter the Big Apple’s anonymous and unclaimed dead for 150 years. But the number of coffins in the video in the midst of the coronavirus plague hanging over the city presents an eerie picture.

Drone video may show inmates burying coffins on NYC’s infamous Hart Island https://t.co/Pc0yEFV4hw pic.twitter.com/OHXtKWNiCd

— New York Post (@nypost) April 7, 2020

New York City officials acknowledge the possibility of temporary internment for some COVID-19 cases, even as refrigerated trucks function as morgues. Drone video shot last week appears to show the digging of graves on Hart Island in the Bronx, a preservationist group claims. pic.twitter.com/Beaq8jnD5A

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) April 7, 2020