Cops investigate remains for link to missing autistic boy

The waterlogged sneakers and jeans recovered when a boy’s decomposed body parts were discovered washed up on a Northern Queens beach are a match to the clothing last seen on missing Avonte Oquendo, the family’s lawyer confirmed Friday.

The partially skeletonized parts include a left arm, two severed legs still inside their jeans, human rib bones and a piece of pelvic bone, all recovered by cops after the arm was stumbled on first, by chance, by a 19-year-old photography major who lives nearby, law enforcement sources told The Post.

The teen, Natasha Shapiro, takes classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and had been taking pictures of the beach at 7:30 Thursday night.

Avonte OquendoAP

“How do I get myself involved in these things?” she posted on her Facebook page Friday after being repeatedly grilled by cops about her grisly find on the beach off College Point, Queens.

“I just want to be left alone,” the rattled young woman told reporters outside her home later Friday. “I called police. That’s it. I want nothing else to do with any of it,” she added.

A conclusive DNA match will take days, lawyers for Oquendo’s family said.

Oquendo’s mom, Vanessa Fontaine, “Is still hopeful that it is not Avonte,” said lawyer David Perecman. “She is not convinced that it is her son.”

Fontaine got the news at 2 a.m. Friday morning, the lawyer said.

“Her initial reaction was until I hear more, until I see more, there’s been a lot of bad leads,” he said.

“ She’s being a mom. Maybe I would need more before I accept anything as complete, and I think that’s what she’s doing,” he added.

“The bright light test is the DNA,” he said. “It could take a couple of days, it could take a month,” he said

Fontaine has been asked to give investigators a sample of her DNA, so that it can be compared the remains recovered from the banks near Powell Cove.

Officials are waiting for DNA test results before announcing whether the severed body parts mark the tragic end of the search for the autistic 14-year-old.

The recovered sneakers are a size 5 and ¹/2 black Nike Air Jordan, just like the sneaker Avonte, 14, was wearing on the October day when he disappeared from his Long Island City school 11 miles downstream, said Perecman.

AP Photo/Jason DeCrow
The jeans — attached to two severed legs along with a pair of white socks and the black sneakers and found by cops some 15 to 20 feet from where the arm, with the hand still attached, was discovered on a rock by the passing girl — are the same size, a child’s size 16, he added.

The jeans — attached to two severed legs along with a pair of white socks and the black sneakers and found by cops some 15 to 20 feet from where the arm, with the hand still attached, was discovered on a rock by the passing teen — are the same size, a child’s size 16, he added.

The remains of a left arm had been found first, as Shapiro snapped art photographs on the waterfront near Hermon A. MacNeil Park , according to law enforcement sources.

The girl wrote about the discovery on social media and then went home before alerting authorities, a police source said — a charge the teen’s mother said was not true.

“She didn’t post any photos on social media,” she said, explaining that her daughter didn’t call cops at first because she was “very upset.”

“Instead of calling 911 right away, she got on Twitter and talked about it,” the source countered. “Then she finally told her mom and they called 911.”

Avonte was seen on surveillance video leaving the Center Boulevard School at about 12:30 p.m. on Oct. 4.

Police and volunteers searched the city for months, including in subway tunnels, because Avonte’s family said the boy is fascinated by the subway system.

A $95,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the whereabouts of the teen, who cannot speak.

Additional reporting by Dana Sauchelli, Aaron Feis and Kirstan Conley