Skeletal remains found at NYC construction site ID’d as ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protester missing for a decade

Skeletal remains found at a New York City construction site two years ago have been positively identified as a 19-year-old “Occupy Wall Street” protester who went in 2012. 

The New York Police Department (NYPD) is now asking the public for information regarding the death of Stevie Bates, who was reported missing in April 2012. 

In 2020, during an excavation at 80-97 Cypress Avenue, Bates’ skeletal remains were discovered. 

New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner positively identified the remains as Bates on Friday. 

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The gruesome discovery was made at a Queens construction site for a new apartment building. The NYPD lists her age as 28 and notes that she was homeless. 

Her cause of death remains part of the ongoing investigation, police said. So far, her death is not considered a homicide. 

Bates, who attended Hunter College, was deeply involved in the 2011 “Occupy Wall Street” movement, camping out with hundreds of others in Zuccotti Park for two months until police dispersed protesters in November of that year. 

On April 27, 2012, Bates had borrowed a cell phone to call her mother from Yonkers, saying she was on a Greyhound bus layover in Pittsburgh, the New York Post reported. 

Surveillance video shows her boarding the bus in Pittsburgh. 

Her mother, Vivian Bates-Jones, told ABC Eyewitness News in 2021 that her daughter had later returned to New York and went to visit her boyfriend, who was squatting at a home in Queens. 

The home is reportedly close to where the remains were found years later. 

Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). All calls are strictly confidential, police said.