Results tagged “arrested”

A disabled Vietnam veteran who defied the city Parks Department by setting up a hot dog stand on prime real estate outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art was carted off in handcuffs yesterday. Dan Rossi, 69, was charged with obstructing traffic and disorderly conduct after he refused to relocate his stand during an enforcement sweep. The area outside the Met has been a lucrative location for the Parks Department, which leased the space to one vendor for $642,000 a year.

Richie Notar, the co-owner of acclaimed sushi chain Nobu, took a pill and drank a glass of wine before his Monday night red-eye flight from LA to New York. Then he was "out for the count"—at least, from his point of view. But before the flight was over, he'd be trying to bite his way through a pair of flex cuffs. One witness from the flight gave this account:

Continue reading "Nobu Co-Owner Handcuffed After Freaky Flight Outburst"

The son of a Harlem landlord is accused scamming potential buyers by trying to sell a building he did not own. The commercial property, located on a triangular lot just north of Central Park at 21-41 Lenox Avenue, was entirely owned by another man. But alleged grifter Henry Vargas told buyers the man, Manuel Duran Jr., was just an elderly farmer from the Dominican Republic whose share was only 10 percent.

The second man accused of beating an openly gay man in Queens Friday morning was been returned to NYC last night, after being arrested in Norfolk, Virginia, late Tuesday. But the sister of suspect Daniel Rodriguez, 21, insists her brother did not commit a hate crime—because he has gay relatives and even once had a homosexual roommate. Christina Rodriguez tells the Daily News, "This wasn't a hate crime. If he's guilty of anything, he'll man up to it." Rodriguez's brother Eddie also vouched for him.

The NYPD cop facing up to 15 years in prison for allegedly flashing his gun at rowdy Rangers fans on the LIRR is no longer talking to the press, after saying way too much to a local news crew. But the Nassau district attorney's office is talking, and tells Newsday, "The allegation is that he was not acting in any legal law enforcement capacity, and he allegedly used his weapon to menace the passengers, so it doesn't matter that he's licensed or a trained professional." But surely the jury will take into account that Officer David Hendrick's alleged targets were Rangers fans from Long Island?

An off-duty NYPD officer was arrested Sunday night after waving his gun at a group of rowdy, belligerent Rangers fans. For some reason, that's a crime, and Officer David Hendrick, a 16-year veteran assigned to the Manhattan Task Force, faces a felony charge of criminal possession of a weapon and a lesser charge of menacing. MTA cops stopped the Ronkonkoma-bound train in Mineola after several frightened passengers called 911 to report that a man had brandished a gun.

After a two year investigation, the Manhattan DA has indicted 29 people accused of connections with the Lucchese crime family, and six of them worked as inspectors for the city Department of Buildings. Asked how the mobsters were able to rise to the level of supervisory positions in the department, DA Robert Morgenthau told reporters, "I’ll leave that for you to figure out...They had developed a small beachfront into this agency... This two-year joint investigation reminds us that the threat of traditional organized crime is not a thing of the past."

Yesterday police arrested a special education teacher for the Bronx School Of Science Inquiry and Investigation at M.S. 331, charging him with rape and sexual misconduct. Teacher Bill Agosto, 26, is charged with third degree rape and sexual misconduct for allegedly carrying on a year-long sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl, who was not a student at M.S. 331. Police sources tell the Daily News the relationship was consensual, and resulted in the girl getting pregnant. The affair allegedly began when he worked at a different school as a track coach.

Threatening to kill people like President Obama and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly isn't what made Crank Yankers a hit. On Sunday afternoon, police arrested 18-year-old Bronx teen Jonathan Avalos for calling 911 five times that morning and making the threats. Police sources tell the Daily News he's undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, because standing outside an Obama event with a gun is one thing, but crank calls will not be tolerated.

Oh no, man! According to witnesses, this morning the NYPD detained several volunteers working with the Yes Men to distribute the hoax edition of the New York Post. Photographer Jason Nicholas was at the scene outside News Corp., the Post headquarters, when he observed cops detaining three volunteers who had been handing out copies.

In an indictment unsealed yesterday, Bronx cop Marc Rios, a 12-year-veteran, is accused of assaulting a man outside a Kingsbridge nightclub around 4:20 a.m. on March 30th. Assistant DA James Cudden says the "unprovoked incident" happened after Rios's squad car almost hit clubgoer John Roperto, who had just exited the El Aguila nightclub. Roperto angrily hit the hood of the car, and Rios got out and cracked Roperto in the face with his nightstick—breaking the man's cheekbone and the baton. Rios then drove off, but when his Sergeant informed him about a 911 call to the location, he allegedly quipped, "That must be my bag of shit." Rios faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted; his lawyer tells the Post he acted in self-defense because Roperto, who was "quite likely... highly intoxicated," disobeyed an order to stop and approached Rios with his hands hidden beneath a jacket. Rios's lawyer also points out that Roperto got off easy, because "perhaps an inexperienced officer might've pulled out his gun and shot him."

The man whom cops allegedly sodomized in a Brooklyn subway station last October says police are still on his tail. 24-year-old Michael Mineo claims he was innocently relaxing on a bench in a Canarsie playground Monday night when two squad cars arrived and arrested him. "I wasn't doing nothing," Mineo tells the Daily News. "I was just sitting on the park bench talking to a friend. They knew who I was. Of course they did." Mineo is suing the city for $220 million over the alleged sodomy, and three officers are under indictment. But the cops who arrested Mineo Monday are from a different precinct, and police spokesman Paul Brown insists that they only arrested Mineo after he refused to leave and they discovered a warrant for his arrest. Mineo's lawyer Stephen Jackson says the warrant popped because Mineo mixed up the dates on a court appearance last week and failed to certify completion of community service for a prior assault arrest. Jackson agrees that cops are targeting Mineo, telling the News, "Of course they knew who he was. I think two squad cars shows premeditation."

The future used to be in plastics, but now it's cardboard. While you were in some office hustling to make an honest buck, a team of freewheeling thieves were raking in $1,000 a night intercepting cardboard left out for recycling... and recycling it themselves. Apparently, there's big money in those brown boxes, and now we're really kicking ourselves for not hoarding more. Yesterday Queens District Attorney Richard Brown announced the arrest of eight men involved in the recycling ring; according to Brown they worked in two-man teams, stealing 1-ton bales of cardboard that companies had left out for private carters. That's unlawful, and the city has been trying to crack down on perpetrators for years. Speaking to reporters, Brown revealed that "for the price of renting a box van, each team could net close to $1,000 a night by bringing the stolen cardboard to a recyclable transfer station," Brown said. The value of recyclables is soaring these days, and cardboard's risen as high as $75 per ton! In June, an East Side grocery store manager was held-up at knife point for his cardboard, and cops later busted the thieves in a truck loaded with 37 bundles worth $5,550 when sold to recycling centers.

A 15-year-old Brooklyn boy was arrested yesterday after accidentally shooting himself in the penis. The Post's stupid headline is, "So much for packing a, um, rod," and there are going to be plenty of bad jokes about going off half-cocked in the comments, but we can't help but pity the kid. Khamir Grant told cops he was walking home from Amersfort Park in East Flatbush around 1:30 a.m. Sunday with a gun in his waistband when the piece began to slip into his pants. When Grant grabbed for it, he accidentally pulled the trigger, firing a bullet "right through his penis," in the Post's words. Grant staggered home, told his mother what happened, and they took a livery car to Kings County Hospital, where Grant was released after treatment and then arrested. He's charged with reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon—the same charges levied against Plaxico Burress, who last year shot himself in a nightclub under similar circumstances, albeit with less catastrophic results.

On the evening of August 5th, Long Island resident Lara Tepper was riding the train from Hicksville to Manhattan to meet friends for dinner. But her plans were seriously derailed after an LIRR conductor accused her of using a counterfeit ticket. Tepper says she purchased the 10-trip ticket for $66 in July, and had already used it four times, but when the conductor came to punch her ticket, "She looked at it, felt it for a couple of minutes, and said it's fake." That's because the ticket was missing the MTA logo hologram "Watch the gap" warning.

Earlier this morning a 50-year-old Staten Island woman sideswiped four parked cars on her way home from the Dugout Pub on Staten Island. According to the Staten Island Advance, the driver, Dorothy Scrimenti, made it about a half-mile from the bar in her Mercury Mountaineer before crashing to a halt around 2 a.m. Police say she had almost four times the legal amount of booze in her system when she was arrested—that would be .292 percent , more than three-and-a-half times the .08 percent legal limit. Scrimenti also had bloodshot, watery eyes; a "belligerent attitude"; and a hope that the arresting officers were complete morons, because she told them she had only consumed one Maui Wowie. The Maui Wowie cocktail is a mixture of coconut rum, melon liqueur and, often, other liqueurs, as well as pineapple juice and orange juice. It's also, apparently, a particularly potent strain of cannabis which has been immortalized in song by recording artist Kid Cudi. ("Make ya feel great, you forget you in the states, might relocate/So you can smoke all the Maui Wowie you can take.") So maybe that's what Scrimenti actually "consumed" at the bar? We're on our way to the Dugout Pub to investigate.

A Mister Softee ice cream truck driver on Long Island was arrested Saturday after undercover narcotics officers saw him park his truck outside a drug dealer's house they had under surveillance. Police say Kenneth Leiton, 22, rolled up to the home around 4 p.m. and entered the house to conduct a drug deal. He then returned to the truck, turned the music back on, and continued along his route. According to the Post, the cops soon "stopped him cold" and found several small bags of coke and a bag of pot hidden in the sprinkles. He's charged with numerous counts of possession of a controlled substance and with endangering the welfare of a child. Also arrested was Randall Surmanek, 23, who was riding in the truck with Leiton, and two individuals at the drug house. Police tell Newsday Leiton was not the truck owner, but it's still another black eye for Mister Softee—earlier this summer a Softee franchisee was accused of threatening to beat a Kool Man driver for invading "his" turf in Queens. And don't even get us started on the jingle wars.

Remember Joshua Walter, the teen fashion model from Queens who made headlines last fall after his 37-year-old lover, a former teacher, sued the city for firing her over their affair? He's back in the news, and if you recall the way he dealt with tabloid reporters outside his house in November— "You want to see assault? Turn that thing off!"—you won't be too surprised by the latest turn of events. Walter, now 20 and a dad, was arrested late Wednesday night with three others and charged with robbing 15 gas stations and delis in Queens and Greenpoint. According to the Post, they all confessed. The spree began June 14th and ended on Sunday at a Dunkin' Donuts on Horace Harding Expressway, where Walter allegedly pistol-whipped one of the victims. Police spotted the crew around 1:30 a.m. Thursday in a maroon Chevy Astro van matching the description of the getaway car; after being pulled over the young men ran but were quickly apprehended, and a .380-caliber automatic handgun was found in the van. Approached by the Daily News outside her Queens home, Walter's poor mother shouted, "I got something to say: Leave my family alone!"

Undercover cops have nabbed another would-be pedophile who thought he was meeting a minor for a sexual rendezvous. This time the alleged perv is an executive for the Gristedes supermarket chain, 59-year-old Michael Seltzer. Investigators say Seltzer, the chain's treasurer, had been exchanging salacious online messages with the "teen" for about a year and was finally supposed to meet her for the first time on Tuesday for a sexual encounter in Douglaston. But the 14-year-old girl didn't actually exist, and Seltzer, using the irresistible screen name LOVE775419, had been communicating with undercover cops the entire time. He was arrested when he approached an undercover female officer, and police have seized computers at his home and at Gristedes' Manhattan headquarters. Seltzer is being charged with attempted rape and could face up to four years in prison, the Daily News reports. And back in 1999, Seltzer was arrested for attempting to bribe a tax warrant investigator in return for eliminating nearly $200,000 in outstanding City and State taxes owed by the supermarket chain.

Looks like they're going to need a cell with Kryptonite bars. After arresting a Bronx man dressed as Superman in Times Square last week, the very same Man of Steel was back on the streets last night, and cops quickly collared him in Columbus Circle. And once again, it's not exactly clear what Maksim Katsnelson did to initiate the arrest (police say he was playing in traffic) but after watching him squirm and shriek like a stuck pig in the videos below, you can see why he was charged with resisting arrest. A freelance photographer who snapped a great shot of Superman leaving court today with his mother and father tells City Room that during his court appearance, Katsnelson "was generally presenting himself as a civil rights-minded humanist, and he does these things to protest authoritarianism."

At long last, Gotham's police force has taken action to save the city from two reckless vigilante "superheroes" who have been terrorizing citizens with their lawless brand of street justice. Yesterday a group of doughty NYPD officers—fed up with the costly destruction unleashed upon our fair city by those masked outlaws "Batman" and "Superman"—spotted the two renegade freaks in Times Square and attempted to bring them to justice. According to The New York Post, officers tried booking the super-zeros on a charge of "performing in costume in public" without a license—but the only thing these two clowns were performing was civil disobedience.

As a 15-year veteran of the NYPD, Sergeant Joseph Spiekerman knew exactly what to do after drunkenly running a red light and plowing into 68-year-old Barry Gintel one morning last month: Refuse to take the breath test! Though he admitted he'd been drinking, cops on the scene had to get a court order to draw his blood, so we'll never know just how wasted Officer Spiekerman was when he ran over Gintel at 6:40 a.m. on June 29th at York Avenue and 86th Street. Gintel was on his way back to his apartment after buying a coffee and two buttered rolls at The Mansion diner; the cashier tells the Daily News, "I give him his change, look out the window, and I see he got hit and goes flying 10, maybe 20 feet in the air." The impact shattered the windshield of Spiekerman's Volvo and Gintel underwent emergency surgery for two fractured legs, broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and head and neck injuries. He's still in the hospital and wearing a neck brace! Spiekerman has been suspended without pay and is charged with felony vehicular assault and DWI, and the News seems rather surprised that "police officials declined to explain why they failed to release details of the crash and Spiekerman's arrest sooner."

The Bronx man who was arrested Tuesday after going full monty during a flight bound from Charlotte to L.A. wasn't doing it to freak out the squares; he happens to be bipolar. Authorities have identified the U.S. Airways passenger as Keith Wright, a Navy veteran, and his wife Debra tells the Daily News that Keith left their Bronx home Tuesday without telling her, after spending days not eating or sleeping: "When I came home from work he wasn't around. Next thing I know I get a call from a FBI officer. That is when I knew."

DEA agents seized $3 million in marijuana and $500,000 cash in a raid on a Staten Island home last week, arresting Odede Kariti, 27, and his wife, Yotvat Kariti, 24, along with a third man, Brian Guariglia. According to court papers obtained by the Staten Island Advance, the trio are part of a drug ring that's smuggled millions of dollars of high-grade marijuana from Canada. Authorities have been investigating the ring for two years, and finally took action on May 11th after getting a tip that Guariglia was delivering a 300-pound shipment that day. The weed was stashed in "large hockey bags" in Guariglia's truck, and federal agents arrested him as he made the drop at the Karitis' house. Once inside, they also found "numerous" hockey bags containing another 250-300 pounds of marijuana. Now the Karitis and Guariglia face up to 40 years in prison for trying to distribute a mostly harmless plant whose worst side-effect is patch pants. This is the second major marijuana bust on Staten Island in the past few months; in April three men were nailed for moving "large quantities" of herb in a mobile-home.

Newlywed Rebecca Padro had just moved to Flatbush from Philadelphia, so when her husband Miguel, a grad student, went missing on his way to work two months ago, she got a little panicked. According to Fox News, Miguel had left the apartment on his bike to ride over to his part time job at the Prospect Park tennis center, but never made it work and wasn't returning her calls. After some hours passed, she notified Miguel's parents. His brother Juan rushed down from Massachusetts, and she called the 71st Precinct, where the person who fielded the call wasn't aware that Miguel had been arrested and booked that day in that very precinct.

A Mister Softee truck driver in Queens didn't find anything funny about a rival Good Humor man encroaching on his turf, so he decided to make him an offer he couldn't refuse. According to the Post, on Tuesday afternoon in Elmhurst, George Peralta, 27, pulled his Mister Softee truck in front of 50-year-old Good Humor man Ernesto Valverde, while accomplice Andy Arevalo parked his ice cream truck behind Valverde, blocking him in. With the help of a third man, they allegedly took Valverde's keys and told him to "stay off [our] route, we know where you live, we know where you parked the truck."

A public school principal in Fort Greene was arrested at P.S. 20 yesterday for allegedly assaulting a teacher during a meeting to discuss allegations of corporal punishment against a special ed teacher. Principal Sean Keaton has been the target of intense criticism from parents lately—many of them newer, more affluent arrivals to Fort Greene, who see him as authoritarian and resistant to parental involvement. According to The Local, "the community conversation about him often seemed to break down along class lines... with working-class parents defending him. There was often a racial component to the debate as well (Mr. Keaton is black)."

One day in June 2007, maintenance man Robert Lopez was taking out the trash at the Cadman Towers in Brooklyn Heights when he found some fake dynamite sticks attached to a clock. "I thought it was cool," he tells the Times, and so he took it home to make a piggy bank out of it. That idea landed him in Riker's Island (where inmates called him the "Mad Bomber") and an indictment on charges of "placing a false bomb or hazardous substance," a felony that carries up to four years in prison. A transit worker had spotted him carrying the fake dynamite and called police, who arrested him outside his Fort Greene apartment. Which he no longer rents; he lost his job and he's been homeless for a month. Sometimes he cleans a McDonald's in Brooklyn. Sad enough yet? In a teary interview with the Times, he explains, "On 9/11, from my roof of my building I could see the top of the towers smoking... I’m not a terrorist. I wouldn’t hurt nobody like that. Never." The Brooklyn D.A. isn't convinced, and Lopez is due back in court on Wednesday.

An inebriated 49-year-old artist was recently busted for drawing a smiley face at an L train stop. Well that certainly isn't the way you want to go down the night before your big gallery opening! The NY Post reports that the Japanese pop artist Yoshitomo Nara was caught red handed at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 27th, putting Sharpie to brick (which has since been cleaned, but some say would have been worth around $10K).

It took officers from four precincts and the elite Emergency Services Unit over a quarter of an hour to break up a massive bar brawl at McFadden's on 42nd Street and Second Avenue around 10:30 on Saturday night. Police say a crowd of about 20 people were involved in the melee when it erupted out onto the street. Five people were finally arrested, including two firefighters, and another two firefighters were given summons for disorderly conduct after they went to the stationhouse and harassed cops about the arrests.