{"id":588468,"date":"2026-02-14T02:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T02:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/588468\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T02:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T02:57:12","slug":"18-days-20-lives-new-yorkers-who-didnt-survive-the-cold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/588468\/","title":{"rendered":"18 Days, 20 Lives: New Yorkers Who Didn\u2019t Survive the Cold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tuesday, Jan. 27<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text g-body-text svelte-i37gsg g-text_last\"><strong>Philip Piuma,<\/strong> 47, left his home on Jan. 26 around 1:30 p.m. to pick up a prescription for his uncle at CVS. The next morning, he was found dead on a bench outside a Key Food supermarket a mile away.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text g-body-text svelte-i37gsg g-text_last\">Mr. Piuma\u2019s stepfather, John Sandrowsky, said detectives told him that Mr. Piuma had fallen twice, possibly from the bench outside Key Food, broken his nose and injured his eye socket. <\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text g-body-text svelte-i37gsg g-text_last\">At around 6 p.m. on Jan. 26, Mr. Piuma entered the store and lurched unsteadily in the aisles, said a manager, Luis Polanco, who assumed he was drunk. Mr. Piuma bought two jars of peanut butter, went outside and sat on the bench.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text g-body-text svelte-i37gsg g-text_last\">At 9 p.m. when Mr. Polanco was closing up, Mr. Piuma was still there. \u201cI asked, \u2018Everything OK?\u2019 He said \u2018yes,\u2019\u201d Mr. Polanco said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text g-body-text svelte-i37gsg g-text_last\">Security footage shows that sometime after 10 p.m., Mr. Piuma toppled over, sprawling across the bench. When Mr. Polanco arrived around 6 a.m. to open the store, Mr. Piuma did not stir when he greeted him. He called 911.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text g-body-text svelte-i37gsg g-text_last\">Mr. Sandrowsky said detectives told him that someone had given his stepson tissues for his bleeding face at some point. \u201cYou offered some help, that\u2019s great,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if you\u2019re bleeding out there and it\u2019s that cold, I would question whether or not you\u2019re OK.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text g-body-text svelte-i37gsg g-text_last\">Mr. Piuma, who worked two jobs \u2014 as a dispatcher for an alarm company and an ambulette service \u2014 was a devoted volunteer at a nearby church, Mr. Sandrowsky said. \u201cHe had a good heart,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tuesday, Jan. 27 Philip Piuma, 47, left his home on Jan. 26 around 1:30 p.m. to pick up&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":588469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,254612,59930,254609,6004,254613,98453,12931,5708,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,254614,254611,254610,12930,212469,132197,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,10901,313,223815,5709],"class_list":["post-588468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-brooklyn-hospital-center","tag-chi","tag-cold-and-cold-spells","tag-death-and-dying","tag-elmhurst-hospital-center","tag-jacobi-medical-center","tag-jessica-1985","tag-mamdani","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-osse","tag-port-authority-bus-terminal-manhattan","tag-power-failures-and-blackouts","tag-ramos","tag-snow-and-snowstorms","tag-st-barnabas-hospital","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vis-design","tag-weather","tag-winter-season","tag-zohran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}