Results tagged “attack”

Elmhurst resident Jack Rhodes, who was convicted of beating up and robbing three women (including a 101-year-old using a walker) was sentenced to 75 years in prison yesterday. Queens Supreme Court Justice Gregory Lasak said, "That comes out to about a year for every dollar you took from those people"—Rhodes managed to steal just $78 from the three muggings—"Your actions ...were reprehensible. It shocks the senses. I've never seen anything like it."

A Midtown family was held hostage by its pet cat until rescue workers were able to trap the feline yesterday afternoon. It all started at around 3 pm, when Carmen — a 16-pound Russian blue with diabetes and a thyroid condition — turned on her owners, Rosa Davila and her son Victor Marte, 27, the Post reports.

A chef at the penthouse lounge 230 Fifth was arrested on Halloween after allegedly forcing himself on a Canadian woman dressed as a sexy lion. As the club's party was winding down at 3 a.m. on Sunday, 28-year-old Carlos Angel "pounced" on the woman as she came out of a restroom and shoved her back inside, sources say. He kissed her repeatedly while groping her, but she managed to slip away and alert a manager—who actually did the right thing by calling the police, not trying to hush it up!

This Chinatown surveillance video depicts a heated altercation between an NYPD traffic agent and a car owner on Lafayette Street around 3:15 p.m. on October 8th. The video appears to show irate traffic agent Twana Chapman striking driver Qiang Nian Zhu after he tried to cover his registration sticker, so Chapman could not scan it. A crowd gathers, and Chapman is seen getting in one bystander's face, as another traffic agent pulls her away. But because there is no audio, it's not possible to verify an allegation that Chapman also made racist remarks.

A 15-year-old teen in Monroe, NY (in Orange County, about 60 miles away) was arrested for "allegedly plotting to carry out a Columbine-style attack at Monroe Woodbury High School" on the anniversary of Columbine next year. MyFoxNY reports the teen said he was bullied and had "a lot of hatred" for his classmates. Also: "Officers searched the teen's home Monday night and found four 16-ounce bottles of gasoline, items that could be used as fuses, a torch, a machete, a black trench coat, three propane tanks, two computers and several other electronic devices, authorities said." The teen was committed to a psychiatric facility.

A Mexican day laborer is hospitalized with brain damage after being attacked somewhere in Williamsburg or Bushwick by three black men shouting "wetback." Mario Vera was riding his bike back home to Bushwick with groceries from a lower Manhattan food pantry when the young men hit him in the back of his head "with something hard" while yelling anti-immigrant slurs. The assault happened on September 23rd, but wasn't reported until last Friday, because Vera is an undocumented immigrant afraid to go to the police. (NYPD policy prohibits officers from sharing law-abiding immigrants' status with the Feds, but it has been known to happen.)

A murderous Harlem man died in a hail of NYPD bullets last night, after apparently stabbing two men, one fatally. Police arrived at the West 144th Street building around 6:45 last night to find one victim standing outside with stab wounds to his hand and torso, and later discovered another victim stabbed to death in his apartment near his two-year-old, who was unharmed.

Couples therapist Joyce Poster-Lederman has been barred from her Upper West Side apartment since September 29th, when she allegedly slashed her 79-year-old husband with two kitchen knives. But yesterday her lawyers convinced Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Anthony Ferrara to let her pack her knives and go home—despite the judge's initial reluctance. Defense lawyer Aaron Wallenstein insisted to Judge Ferrara that husband Selwyn Lederman, also a psychologist, wants her back. But the judge got the courtroom in stiches with his commentary.

Following a Friday night attack outside of McCoy's bar in Hell's Kitchen, where a group of gay men were called "faggots" prior to being physically assaulted, pressure continues to be put on the NYPD for their alleged negligence in the situation.

Yesterday we reported on an anti-gay attack that occurred in Hell's Kitchen this past Friday night. WPLJ DJ Blake Hayes (pictured), cabaret and Broadway performer Danny Calvert, and another friend were attacked by a patron of McCoy's bar; they claim the police officers who showed up refused to take their attacker's information, or let them file a claim. They also expressed concern that McCoy's bouncer (who stopped the attack) allowed the attacker back into the bar.

Well, who wouldn't visit a convicted kidnapper and sex attacker to visit him in prison?! The Daily News' Jane Ridley says of her visit to see Peter Braunstein, "I went, though I really don't care what he has to say. I went because he's this Hannibal Lechter-style creep you just have to see - and stare at in the way we look at car accidents we pass on the highway." Good reason—pass the fava beans and Chianti!

This past Friday night, WPLJ DJ Blake Hayes, cabaret and Broadway performer Danny Calvert and another friend were walking down 9th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen when a cigarette butt was thrown at them by a man outside of McCoy's bar, followed by the words, "Keep moving, faggot."

A firefighter is in critical condition after a violent altercation erupted inside the Whitehall Terminal on his way to Staten Island early Monday morning. Matthew Dugan, 34, who is assigned to Ladder 15 near the South Street Seaport, had to undergo emergency surgery to relieve swelling on the brain caused by the fight, which started around 1:30 a.m. as he entered the terminal with his girlfriend after drinking at a lower Manhattan bar. Witnesses tell police the fight started when three people laughed at Dugan's girlfriend after she tripped. One bystander tells the Post, "When they laughed, he told them to grow up. They said, ‘Shut the f—k up before we beat you up.’" The situation quickly escalated, and the assailants, described only as two men and one woman, began hitting him in the head and punching him in the face. Dugan, who was off-duty, didn't lose consciousness, but was bleeding heavily from his face and mouth when the ambulance arrived. One of his fellow firefighters tells the Daily News, "We're hoping he's going to be okay." And investigators are reviewing surveillance video showing suspects running from the terminal after the brawl.

A nurse's assistant was brutally attacked while tending to a patient at Kings County Hospital—and now another patient is in custody. Robert Rush, who was in the psychiatric unit, was charged with assault for attacking Sandra Douglas and two other people. The Daily News reports that on Tuesday "Rush, who weighs more than 300 pounds, walked into a room where Douglas, 49, was attending to another patient about 5:30 a.m. and clocked her in the head. When she fell, he repeatedly kicked and hit her, witnesses said." Douglas's son, who was at his mother's bedside in intensive care, spoke to staffers about the attack, "He was just beating on her, banging her head on the floor. It took four people to get him off her." On Sunday, Rush also assaulted two staffers who tried to stop him from attacking another patient, but wasn't charged. He also told NY1, "It shouldn't happen. You should be able to go to work and know that there is security in a facility like that." The Health and Hospitals Corporation says it's investigating the incident; Kings County's psych unit is also where patient Esmin Green died in a waiting room, after waiting for over a day to be seen.

Somehow a simple "dog bites dog" headline has garnered nearly a week of news coverage. Actor Gerard Butler (or his "people" as it were) is refusing to give up any vet records (including a bill) or photos showing his pug Lolita was bit by a Queens couple's greyhound, called Mayfly. The couple says Butler threw their dog against a fence during the incident, and told them it should be "put down." WABC talked to Fred Varecka (Mayfly's owner), and he told them, "[Butler]'s in damage control mode right now to try and protect his image." A few more new details: there were two greyhounds, and Varecka says one of them, "lunged at the pug and barked but my wife had good control of the dogs." When they asked him to leash his pug, Butler walked away and they followed him, and that's when Butler hulked out; "In a matter of seconds he slapped the dogs face, dog went flying up against the fence."

The pigeon gangs of Greenpoint are still at it! After one baby falcon was rescued from a bird-on-bird attack, our photographer Katie Sokoler informs us the violence is still going on. She tells us, "I came out of my apartment this morning and saw a baby falcon sitting on the railing of my stoop. It was so adorable but then suddenly a group of pigeons came down and started attacking it! I spent the whole morning kicking pigeon ass and finally captured the hurt falcon. But as I was walking back to my apartment, a woman ran up to me and told me that she saw a grown falcon down the street at McGorlick Park and it must be one of her babies. The falcon got frightened and jumped out of my hands and hid in some bushes by a church and now I can find the hurt lil' guy." Greenpoint, it's time to start a pigeon task force.

       

The Center for an Urban Future has followed up last year's hit "Attack of the Chains" study with a terrifying new sequel: "Return of the Chains." [pdf] They're back, their power is growing, and not even the recession can stop them from ultimately setting up shop inside your skull. Since last year's report about national retailers' footprints across our increasingly homogeneous city, over 30 percent of the chain retailers have expanded their presence. Dunkin' Donuts tops the list for the second straight year, with 429 locations city-wide, despite losing 12 of its stores to the Tim Horton’s invasion and facing blatant NYPD pilfering. According to the report, Dunkin' added 88 new stores in the five boroughs since July 2008.

Police believe that a 69-year-old woman raped in her apartment building at 155th Street and Riverside Drive was attacked by the same man who raped two other women in Hamilton Heights earlier this month. The latest victim was returning home from work at 4 a.m. to 765 Riverside Drive; WCBS 2 reports, "The victim passed mailboxes on her way in through the east entrance of the building. Then [she] proceeded down the stairs to the wood-paneled foyer where her attacker was apparently waiting. The manned elevator is unmanned after 2 a.m., so she had to use the automatic elevator nearby. She opened the door and her attacker apparently crossed the room and followed her" into the elevator, where she was attacked. There's surveillance video of the suspect and the building's shocked residents are asking for additional security and lighting. In the past incidents, the suspect raped a woman in an alleyway near West 148th Street and Broadway and inside another's building near West 144 Street and Convent Avenue.

A Queens man is suing Verizon for employing a repairman who assaulted him in December 2008 at his Sunnyside apartment. Aubrey Isakson says he became suspicious when the worker, Robert Benjamin, wanted to access his apartment, because Verizon had told him that wouldn't be necessary. When Isakson asked to see some identification, Benjamin went berserk, slapping his ID card in his face, saying, "You want to know my name? Here's my name." According to Isakson, Benjamin then punched him repeatedly, breaking his glasses, and squeezed him around the neck, pressing him up against the wall: "He's prepared to kill me. That's all I could think of." Isakson broke free and scrambled downstairs, fracturing his ankle along the way. Benjamin, who had been chasing Isakson, was subdued by a neighbor and arrested, but the Queens DA agreed to dismiss the case if Benjamin stayed out of trouble for six months. A spokesperson for Verizon tells the Post, "In the months since this incident, his conduct has been blameless. As a result, we will not take further action." The kicker? Two days after the fight, Verizon's technical service department called Isakson to say they fixed the problem and didn't actually need to send their skull-cracking repairman in the first place!

We knew that being on a jury for the Astor trial was hard work, considering that it's been going on for months (jury selection was back in March-April!!), there have been tons of witnesses (apparently 14,000 transcription pages worth) and Astor's son and co-defendant, Anthony Marshall, has had many health issues. But now we find out it can even be dangerous work: The jury's forewoman was headed home from court when she was attacked by a knife-wielding stranger on an uptown 4 train!

Last week, a 22-year-old Pratt student was robbed and brutally beaten at Grand and Lexington Avenues in Brooklyn's Clinton Hill section. Eddy Sanchez had been walking towards to the Pratt campus around 10 p.m. last Tuesday night when, WCBS 2 reports, five teens surrounded him—"They demanded money, and when Sanchez initially refused, the suspects punched and kicked him into submission, and took what they wanted." The Daily News adds that one teen used a crowbar to beat him when he tried to fight back. Now Sanchez is in a coma at Kings County Hospital.

Two men have been arraigned on charges of assault as a hate crime after an alleged rock-throwing attack on a transgender female in Queens on Wednesday night. Carmella Etienne, 22, says she walking by the corner of 116th Avenue and 199th Street in St. Albans when two men shouted anti-gay slurs and threatened to cut her throat. (NY1 reports they even threatened to sodomize her with a baseball bat.) After promising to call the police, the two suspects allegedly said, "The police don't care about you, they won't do anything to us." Rocks and a bottle were thrown, and Etienne sustained a deep cut to her leg.

A Brooklyn woman is in critical condition after her husband hacked her repeatedly with a meat cleaver in their Dyker Heights apartment yesterday morning. 54-year-old Shao Ling Ye was sweeping up during breakfast when, according to her husband, Youshening Huang, "She swept over my feet and that really sparked it." Neighbors tell the Daily News they heard Huang, 53, shout, "I've put up with you for all these years!" A dazed and bleeding Shao Ling Ye was then seen stumbling out into the street, gushing blood. Candice Meng, 21, who lives in the basement, tells the Post, "There was blood all over her. I just heard her shouting, 'Help!' We came out and she was lying there with her husband standing next to her looking down at her. He was showing no remorse. He asked me if he could come down and wash his hands." Ye is in critical condition with gashes to her head, arm, chest and finger; Huang is charged with assault, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon. Joseph Tsang, whose parents rent the apartment to Huang, seemed shocked, telling the Daily News, "He's a really peaceful guy. He goes jogging around the neighborhood."

Sometimes when a man and a woman love each other very much, they become physically intimate and express their passion vocally. And sometimes children can mistake mommy's cries of pleasure for howling anguish, and rush to her aide. Such was the awkward and violent scenario that erupted on June 6th when a 16-year-old Connecticut girl heard screams coming from her mother's bedroom and thought she was being murdered. So she called her friends, who burst into the bedroom and beat 25-year-old Roger Swanson with their fists and a bat. (He was hospitalized with a black eye and several bruises.) The girl's mother, Melanie Arnold, 34, denies screaming and says her daughter only heard a slap, but police Lt. Bruce Whiteley insists it was the amorous crying that alarmed the girl, who was arrested Tuesday night along with her three friends. Swanson says the teens never gave him a chance to explain, and tells AP, "What if they fight someone else and those guys don't walk away? What if they kill somebody? Then they're going to spend the rest of their lives in jail. These kids need to learn." Yeah, they need to learn a lot of things. Kids grow up so slow these days!

The NY Post reports that a woman who was walking into her Upper East Side building (exact location not specified) was attacked last week: The 32-year-old woman said the thug grabbed her from behind at 2:20 a.m. Friday." The suspect, Marco Marine, 26, also "tore off the top of her dress and fondled her before knocking her to the ground and fleeing." The woman said, "My immediate reaction was to fight back. I gave chase and was screaming at the top of my lungs." Thankfully, a neighboring doorman appeared and called the police, who then drove the victim around. She was able to identify the suspect, who was arrested for burglary and sex abuse.

As is so often the case, a game of dodgeball erupted in violence at a New Rochelle elementary school on Friday when a substitute teacher got into a fight with a third-grader. The teacher, Daniel Sanabria, claims he was acting in self-defense, but police have charged him with third-degree assault and child endangerment. It seems that the incident was sparked after Sanabria (pictured in his mugshot), who was officiating the game, called the unidentified boy "out," and the child disputed the ruling. Sanabria tells the Post, "He wouldn't sit out when I asked him to."

Yesterday, a woman described a rape and attack very similar to how John Jay College student Imette St. Guillen was attacked. St. Guillen was found dead in 2006, and a bouncer at the bar she was last seen, Darryl Littlejohn, is on trial for her murder. While the woman was unable to pick out Littlejohn in a lineup, a judge allowed her to testify because the attack was so similar to St. Guillen's and another woman's. The Daily News reports that the woman described being "snatched off" Queens Boulevard, and then "the attacker handcuffed her and bundled her into a car," threatening her with a gun. "Warning her to shut up, the attacker drove her to a bedroom that sounded similar to Littlejohn's basement apartment in his mother's Jamaica home. The attacker taped a knit cap over her eyes - a key detail because Littlejohn allegedly taped over St. Guillen's eyes." After raping her, her attacker "forced her to clean up and change into shorts and a T-shirt," which had LIttlejohn's mother's DNA on it.

In January 2008, subway conductor Maurice Parks was walking home in Harlem when he was mugged by a group of attackers who also stabbed him. Parks, a martial arts expert, chased them off but thought he ran into one of them—and fatally stabbed the man, who turned out to be a bystander. Parks is now on trial for Flonarza Byas's death: Prosecutors say Parks "took it upon himself to exact the most ancient form of justice - an eye for an eye," stabbing Byas 15 times. However, Parks' lawyer said his client was "acting under fear and great distress" and "reasonably believed” Byas was one of the attackers, adding, "Mr. Parks was a very innocent victim who made a mistake about another innocent victim." The NY Times has audio of Parks' 911 call, where he tells the operator that he's been attacked and then apparently sees Byas and stabs him—Byas's screams can be heard.

More details have emerged on last night's brutal beating that landed a 50-year-old man in critical condition at St. Vincent's Hospital. Police sources say the attack may have been unprovoked and believe Allen Williams of Buffalo was hailing a cab in the West Village around 2 a.m. when he was beaten by strangers who thought he was gay.

A 50-year-old man is clinging to life at St. Vincent's hospital after being savagely beaten by a group of unidentified men in the West Village around 2 a.m. this morning. Police tell Eyewitness News that the victim, from upstate New York, got into a "verbal dispute" with a group of men outside Riviera Cafe and Sports Bar (pictured), which had closed down for the night an hour earlier. Witnesses saw at least two men flee the scene, but no arrests were made, and no weapon was recovered; police believe the assailants beat their victim with their bare hands. He sustained life-threatening injuries to the back of his head, and is currently in critical condition. Earlier this year, cops arrested two men accused of a violent mugging spree in the West Village, and on May 3rd, unidentified thugs broke the jaw of a 28-year-old man on Christopher Street near Washington Street, also around 2 a.m.