Detective In The Central Park Five Case Dies At 71 To Cancer

Former NYPD Detective Mike Sheehan who questioned the Central Park Five and helped control their confessions has lost his battle to cancer, one week after the release of Netflix’s “When They See Us.”

Sheehan was one of the leading detectives in the high-profile, controversial case of the Central Park Five in 1989, where one Latin American and four African American teenagers – between 14 and 16 years old – were wrongly convicted of beating and raping a white female jogger in the park.

The teens – Raymond Santana, 14, Kevin Richardson, 15, Antron McCray, 15, Yusef Salaam, 15 and Korey Wise, 16 – were forced to confess to the crime, after an extensive 30-hour interrogation with detectives.

Sheehan retired from the police force in 1993 to become a news reporter for Fox 5 until he was fired in 2009 for hitting an NYPD horse with his car.

Mike Sheehan was 71.