Police in New York discovered human remains buried in the back yard of a Brooklyn residence after being tipped off by Guyanese Oswald Lewis, an accused drug smuggler arrested in August following a shootout with US marshals.
According to a report in the New York Post, law-enforcement sources said authorities excavated the back yard in Crown Heights on Thursday afternoon after they received information from Lewis that a body was buried there.
The skeletal remains were found wrapped in plastic and were sent to the Medical Examiner’s Office for testing, sources also told the Post.
The report noted that it was not clear if Lewis was a suspect in the killing.
Lewis, 44, had been on the run for over two decades in the United States when he was finally arrested on August 26.
An NBC News 4 New York report reported sources as saying police are investigating the possibility that the remains belonged to someone who was killed 10 years ago.
According to neighbours who were interviewed, an older man had lived in the home with his wife at that time.
The man died a few years ago and Lewis then moved in and neighbors suspected there was criminal activity happening inside, but in the last two years the house has been trouble-free.
The report said residents were in the house when police arrived with a warrant Thursday but sources said that there was nothing to suggest they have any connection to the dead body in their yard.
Lewis, who had been wanted since he was indicted for conspiracy to distribute cocaine in April 1991 in Virginia, was wearing a bullet-proof vest and had two handguns on his pillow in a Springfield Gardens apartment on the night when the authorities barged in and confronted him, resulting in a shootout.
He opened fire immediately and marshals returned fire and wounded him in the left hand. He managed to flee to the backyard, where he fired on New York Police Department (NYPD) detectives serving as back up. He fired about a dozen shots and emptied both guns, a 9mm Ruger and a .40 calibre Taurus, before tossing them and surrendering, according to a report in the New York Daily News.
