A man who used to jog “four or five days a week” on the same Queens trail that Karina Vetrano was on when she was murdered has apparently gone missing and now investigators are trying to track him down, her parents said Monday.
“This is a very important lead,” said Philip Vetrano, who was joined by his wife, Cathy, on the “The Drive at Five” with Curtis Sliwa.
“I would see him almost every day and now he’s dropped off the face of the earth,” he said. “It’s very important that we speak to him, because he might have seen something.”
While police sources could not confirm whether authorities were on the hunt for the man, Vetrano insisted that investigators were looking to speak with him about his daughter’s murder in Spring Creek Park on Aug. 2.
“[They] just want to question him,” he said.
The devastated dad recalled how the unidentified individual would take the same route day in and day out — wearing very long running shorts and very high socks almost up to his knees.
“He would run down 84th street south, towards 165th Avenue, making a left east onto 165th Avenue and return the same route,” Vetrano said.
“I’ve seen him for three years, four or five days a week…but I haven’t seen him since [the murder].”
Vetrano described the man as being between 30 and 35 years old, 5-foot-9, and 150 pounds with black hair parted to the side.
“He has a really strange stride,” said Vetrano, who is a retired FDNY firefighter.
“In the wintertime, he would wear black gloves and a black cap.
In the summer, he might run shirtless. He is very, very fit. Not a weightlifter, but extremely fit. Somebody must know who this is.”
