Body found in Hampton Bays bay identified as Greenport man

A man found in the waters of Tiana Bay in Hampton Bays has been identified as David Stetler, 38, of Greenport, after a Sunday afternoon call brought Southampton Town Police to the shoreline. Officers received the report at about 2:45 p.m. on May 31 and sent marine units, patrol officers, community response units and detectives to the bay.

Police said the body was located in the water in Tiana Bay and later recovered from a bay-side marsh east of Tiana Beach. The area was described as remote and only reachable at low tide, a detail that helped frame the search and recovery in a section of shoreline where access can be limited. John Lombardi of Flanders said he found the body while scouting horseshoe crab locations in that stretch of the bay.

Southampton Town Police identified the case as incident ST260224428. The department’s public notice listed D/Sgt. Gina Laferrera as the preparer and said the deceased male was Stetler, age 38, of Greenport. Police have not released a cause of death, and they have not said how long he may have been in the water or how he ended up there.

What police have said publicly is limited but significant. Detectives said no criminality is suspected, which reduces the likelihood of an active public-safety threat tied to the discovery. Still, the unanswered questions remain substantial: whether Stetler entered the water accidentally, whether he was in the area earlier in the day, and what events led to the recovery in the marsh east of Tiana Beach.

For relatives, neighbors and others across the East End, the identification connects two different parts of the region, Greenport on the North Fork and Hampton Bays on Long Island’s South Fork, through a case that now moves from an unidentified recovery to a named death. Southampton Town Police asked anyone with information to call 631-702-2230 or 631-728-3400 as detectives continue to piece together the timeline around Tiana Bay.