Karina Vetrano reward fund gets $100K in hours

More than $188,000 has been raised through the website GoFundMe for a reward in the arrest of Karina Vetrano’s killer.

A fund set up to help find information leading to the killer of Karina Vetrano received more than $100,000 in donations less than 24 hours after it was launched and kept growing rapidly from there.

The “Karina Vetrano Memorial Reward Fund” started on Tuesday and hit the $100,000 mark, with more than 1,000 people donating to it, before 5 p.m. the next day.

The reserve is separate from the $20,000 reward being offered by the NYPD. Police officials said Monday at a town hall on the investigation that any private fundraisers could not be used to add to the Crime Stoppers total, but could be awarded in conjunction with it.

The fund was set up along with Cathie and Philip Vetrano, Karina’s parents. A committee of five Howard Beach leaders are watching over the reserve. They are Cathy Napolitano, Phyllis Inserillo, Michelle and David Schwartz and Patricia Adams, publisher of the Forum Newsgroup newspaper.

The gofundme page had an original goal of $100,000, which, after easily reaching that, was extended to $200,000.

Go to the Karina Vetrano Memorial Reward FundGoFundMe page.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).

Christopher B. Taub