A teenage swimmer who died after being pulled from the rough surf at Rockaway Beach was identified Thursday as a Queens high school student.
Police said Rudra Gurung, a senior at Newtown High School in Elmhurst, was the teenager who drowned, despite efforts to revive him.
Divers were deployed to the scene at Beach 67th Street at about 3 p.m. Wednesday after getting a call about an 19-year-old man who went under the water and didn't resurface, according to the FDNY. Rescuers found the teen about an hour later.
Divers paddled the teen to the shore, where paramedics tried to revive him. Officials said he was taken to St. John's Episcopal Hospital, where he died.
FDNY Deputy Chief Joseph Cunningham said the water is deceptively deep in that stretch of the beach, and he believes that played a role in the teen's drowning.
Witnesses said friends waited to call for help because they were worried they would get into trouble.
"They were just drinking and going swimming on the rocks," said Colleen Zou of Far Rockaway, a beachgoer who the teens asked to call police. "They came back and they were like, their friend is out there, his head was bobbing in and out, and when the waves came it just kind of took him and they don't know where he went."
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Police apparently anticipated students would be playing hooky to head to Rockaway Beach on the first summery day of the season: NYPD truancy officers waited at the foot of the Addabbo Bridge Wednesday morning to sweep incoming city buses for students cutting school, DNAInfo reports.
Lifeguards aren't posted at the beach until Memorial Day.
"There's lots of signs, I don't know why people don't read them and take precaution," said Brandy Carlo of Bensonhurst, who was at the beach Thursday and knew the risks of going in the water without a lifeguard there.
"This is tough water, it's the ocean. You think that nothing's going to happen, but it does," said Dean Singer, who's lived in Rockaway for decades.
Others wondered whether lifeguards should be on the job before Memorial Day.
"You know people are going to be out here, they should have them out earlier," said one beachgoer.
