Members of a high school track team running near the railroad tracks in Manhasset made a grim discovery Thursday evening — skeletal human remains in a remote, wooded corner of Plandome Pond Park.
Police now believe the find may close out a nearly yearlong search for a missing Great Neck grandmother.
Nassau County Police Homicide Squad detectives said the remains were located at about 5:44 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 1, in a wooded area of the park at 192 Lindberg St. Police classified the case as an undetermined death.
Plandome Heights Mayor Kenneth Riscica said the runners were coming through from the Long Island Rail Road tracks when one of them, an Eagle Scout, spotted the remains in the brush below the tracks, ABC7 New York reported. The spot is well off the park’s main trails, in an area where residents and children don’t typically walk — or run — through.
“The remains were found in a very remote area of the park,” Riscica said.
At a news conference Friday, Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said the remains are those of a woman and that investigators believe they are tied to a missing persons case from about a year ago.
“We don’t believe it to be criminal in nature,” Ryder said, NBC New York reported.
Detectives are investigating whether the remains are those of Shi Hua Xu, a 79-year-old mother and grandmother with dementia who walked away from her Great Neck home on Dec. 16, 2025, and was never found, NBC New York reported.
Xu’s family told the station that detectives and the Nassau County Medical Examiner’s Office had contacted them and showed them a piece of clothing recovered at the scene, which they identified as hers. The family said in the report that they are awaiting DNA confirmation before commenting further.
Xu was last seen about 3 p.m. that day walking near her home on Oakley Place, wearing a red jacket, dark pants and dark shoes. She left without her cellphone and without the sneakers that held an Apple AirTag her family used to track her, according to earlier reports.
Police said the spot where she was last seen is about four miles from where the remains were found.
The search for Xu stretched over days and included police helicopters, Marine Bureau units, dogs and grid searches, along with family members and neighbors who handed out flyers and asked residents to check sheds, garages and backyards.
North Hempstead Supervisor Jennifer DeSena said in an ABC7 New York report that the discovery may finally give a family that has waited nearly a year some closure.
The park, owned and operated by the Town of North Hempstead, was closed while detectives worked the scene.
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