An award-winning filmmaker drowned at Jacob Riis Park in Queens last week after his surfboard apparently got tangled in a decrepit wooden jetty, a deadly obstruction residents have begged the federal government to remove for years.
Sebastián Lasaosa Rogers, 35, of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, drowned on April 12 while surfing near the federally-owned park’s eastern shoreline at Bay 1, police sources said. The area is a longtime hotspot for queer sunbathers that is now plagued by erosion rapidly washing away the beach.
The dilapidated, 70-plus-year-old jetties in the area are routinely submerged under water at high tide, so it’s unclear if Rogers was trying to navigate them or didn’t see them. His lifeless body was pulled ashore by local beachgoers who spotted a surfboard “tombstoning,” with half of it sticking upright out of the water. They unsuccessfully tried to revive Rogers.
Riis Park has been the scene of at least three teen drownings when lifeguards weren’t present during the past two years, including two who died last June at Bay 1, according to the Rockaway Times.
Rockaways residents and a councilwoman representing nearby beachfront communities told The Post they’ve been trying to get the National Park Service or US Army Corps of Engineers to remove the jetties for years, but the pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
Instead, they said they’ve been repeatedly told the issue needs further studying.
“These agencies have continued to drag their feet on this, and now we have a tragedy on our hands,” said Council Minority Leader Joann Ariola (R-Queens). “We should not have to wait for a disaster to strike before changes are made.”
“The reality is that these jetties are killing people,” said an avid surfer and longtime resident of Neponsit, which borders Riis’ Bay 1.
Rogers would routinely come to Rockaway to surf over the past decade and “had a deep love and appreciation of the ocean,” recalled his friend and fellow surfer Chris Westcott on Facebook.
“Sebastian was a talented cinematographer, human rights activist, and total sweetheart who put everyone around him at ease with his presence,” he said. “I remember the way his eyes lit up in and around the water.”
Rogers’ films include the 2021 documentary “The Art of Making It,” which follows a group of rising artists and won an Audience Award at the SXSW festival.
The Spanish-American cinematographer recently directed “Freeing Juanita,” a documentary that premiered in December and follows a Guatemalan family’s thousand-mile journey to Mexico to help free a loved one unjustly imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit.
Both Ariola and members of the Neponsit Property Owners Association said the park service has its priorities backwards considering the agency allowed the city to site a notorious “tent city” housing 2,000 migrants from November 2023 through January at nearby Floyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn — despite the federal parkland being in a high-risk flood zone.
Riis’ beaches, which stretch over a mile along the west side of the Rockaway peninsula, have been plagued by growing sand erosion over the past decade that have contributed to dangerous swimming conditions.
In 2023, the Army Corps dumped 360,000 cubic yards of sand on the beach to help replenish it, but most of it washed away within six months — exposing deteriorating wooden groins, rockwork, and other structures.
The erosion created enough unsafe conditions for the NPS to restrict public access last summer along Bays 1 to 5 on the park’s east end near Neponsit.
The Neponsit Property Owners Association says it prefers Bay 1 remain shuttered — at least this upcoming beach season — to avoid more tragedies.
The NPS did not return messages, and Rogers’ family could not be reached for comment.
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