Update: Teacher Found Dead in Hudson Valley

Police are investigating after a beloved teacher was found dead in the Hudson Valley.

Queens Music teacher 46-year-old Keith Johnson was reported missing around May 5. On Saturday he was found in the woods in Shandaken. His car was spotted a few miles away at the Woodland Valley trailhead.

Johnson, an avid hiker, was found unresponsive, suffering from hypothermia. A few hours later he died before paramedics could reach him.

“The worst part about it was I was in the parking lot when he was alive,” Clifford Johnson, Keith’s brother, told CBS. “But I guess something happened by the time paramedics got up there because it’s about a two-and-a-half-hour to three-and-a-half-hour hike to where he was.”

Johnson’s neighbor told reporters Johnson wasn’t himself prior to his fatal hiking trip.

"He told me he was going camping," Ken Achan told the New York Daily News. “He seemed kind of off. I didn't see any camping equipment on him. He looked a little upset. He wasn't himself."

However, Johnson’s brother thinks something happened.

“It’s very unlike him to disappear like this,” Clifford Johnson said. “He could have been hurt and just couldn’t physically get down himself. He could have sprained his ankle or something.”

Johnson was a teacher at PS 29 in College Point.

“That was his family. He didn’t have children, and I think that teaching was his family and his children and he loved it,” Clifford Johnson said.

A medical examiner will determine the cause of death but as of now, the death believed to be ruled suspicious.

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Categories: Hudson Valley News