For years, residents of Keyport, New Jersey, have carried a quiet fear about the health of their small waterfront community. According to Eyewitness News, many in the town have raised concerns about the possibility of a cancer cluster, worries rooted in the painful experience of watching the disease sicken or take the lives of people they love.
At the center of those concerns sits a piece of Keyport's industrial past. The town is home to the old Aero Marine industrial site, a location that residents have long viewed with unease. Over the years, the state Department of Environmental Protection, along with potential developers and consultants working with the town, have repeatedly tested the site as questions about its safety persisted.
Now, a new diagnosis has given those fears a fresh and personal face. Families in Keyport who have been touched by cancer say that with the recent illness of a local man named Sal LeCoury, the tally of cases counted within roughly six-tenths of a mile of the site has reached 394, a figure they cite as evidence that something in their community demands closer attention.
For LeCoury, the toll of cancer is already devastatingly familiar. Three years ago, he lost his son to the disease, an anguish that has shaped his outlook ever since. Now he himself has been diagnosed with leukemia, becoming, by the community's count, the 394th case tied to the area around the old industrial property.
Rather than retreat in the face of his own illness, LeCoury has said his mission to help his friends and neighbors is far from over. He described a determination to keep pushing for answers and support for others in Keyport who are confronting cancer, casting his diagnosis not as an ending but as one more reason to act.
To that end, he is turning his energy into something concrete. LeCoury said he is putting together a mobile blood-drive truck, a project he has already begun working on, and that he is building a new team around the effort. He urged young people in particular to come forward and get tested, stressing that early awareness could make a difference for the next generation in the community.
The story, a follow to earlier reporting on the Keyport cancer concerns, underscores how the community continues to press for scrutiny of the old Aero Marine site even as officials and developers point to years of environmental testing. For LeCoury and the families around him, the 394 cases they count are not just a statistic, but a call to keep asking why so many of their neighbors have fallen ill.