Police Identify Man Who Drowned At Ramapo Reservation Thursday

Bergen County Police have released the identity of a at the Thursday afternoon.

Daanish F. Khan, a 25-year-old man from Emerson, died Thursday afternoon after swimming in the restricted Upper Lake area of the MacMillan Reservoir, Bergen County Police Lt. Jim Mullin said Friday morning.

According to Khan’s LinkedIn profile, he was an Operating Room Support Coordinator at NuVasive, a medical device company with a location in Paramus. Representatives from NuVasive said they could not release any details about Khan’s employment there. Khan was a 2009 graduate of Rutgers University, his profile says.

Interests he listed on the professional networking site include learning languages, traveling, doing community service, playing soccer, and swimming.

According to police, Khan was swimming with his girlfriend, a woman in her 20s from Jersey City, and a dog Thursday afternoon. A bystander called police when “the woman and the dog made it to the other side of the lake, but didn’t see him anymore,” Mullin said.

The county’s Water Search and Recovery team conducted a water search in the MacMillan Reservoir and located Khan’s body at about 4:55 p.m., Mullin said. The search began as a “rescue” but changed to a “recovery” during the over two-hour search, he said.

The woman was “very distraught, but not injured,” he said.

Swimming in the restricted area is “a big problem,” Mullin said. “Lots of people go there to swim even though it is clearly posted, and county police units and [park patrols] go up there to tell people not to. But, people ignore the signs.”

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