A two-year-old girl out for a late night stroll was picked up by police just after 2 a.m. this morning near the intersection of Euclid Avenue and Ridgewood Avenue in Cypress Hills. Police say a livery cab driver called 911 after spotting the toddler loitering in front of a store by the corner. The child was taken to Brookdale Hospital and appeared to be in good health, though we've got a hunch her diaper probably needed to be changed. more ›

The police say that a man, suspected in an earlier carjacking, was fatally shot by an off-duty police officer in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn. more ›

A 52-year-old Brooklyn man was murdered with a kitchen knife as he attempted to break up a fight between two women. Felix Figueroa was stabbed in the chest on the corner of Barbey and Pitkin Avenue in Cypress Hills in front of a store where the fight broke out. As the two women fought and Figueroa got in the middle, a relative of one of the women stabbed Figueroa. "By the time I went to separate them, he kicked the guy, got up, and showed me he'd been stabbed," a lifelong friend of the victim told the Daily News. more ›

In a stunning blow to capitalist principles/principals this country was founded on, a Brooklyn high school principal who instilled the virtues of hard work and making an honest living by taking students on a furniture-moving field trip last month is no longer a principal. Altagracia Liciaga was removed from her post at Multicultural High School in Cypress Hills by the DOE a day before fall classes started, after it was revealed that Liciaga forced the students to ride unrestrained in the back of a U-Haul after an enlightening day of hauling filing cabinets. The Post reports that Liciaga even taught one student self-reliance, by letting them drive the U-Haul just a year after getting a driver's license. more ›

While some fancy schoolchildren get field trips to the mortuary or the plane-arium, over at Multicultural HS in Cypress Hills they do things a little differently. The Post reports that the school's principal, Altagracia Liciaga, was recently reprimanded for pulling five students out of class one day in December and sending them to pick up school furniture in midtown with an uninsured U-Haul truck. The students at the mostly immigrant school were given tacos for their day's work, but it's lucky no one was hurt: one kid tells the Post that three students rode in the back of the truck with a dozen heavy cabinets, "including one teen who tied himself down with a scarf to keep from bouncing around like a pinball." Well, at least the field trip taught them some important life lessons about self-preservation? more ›

The city's Administration for Child Services is looking into the death of an 11-month-old boy who passed away in Cypress Hills on Monday night. Police responded to a call of an infant having difficulty breathing at around 8:30 pm, but when they arrived, the baby was already being moved to Brookdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The child — whose name was Major Gonzalez, according to NY1 — had a bruise on his forehead. The station reports that the parents are being questioned, and further testing is required before investigators will be able to determine a cause of death. The Post reports that the parents have been charged with endangering the welfare of a child. more ›

More details have emerged about the police shooting in Cypress Hills that left one dead early on Sunday morning. At around 3 am, two undercover cops responded to reports of a wild bar brawl — which apparently stemmed from a dispute about a spilled drink. When the plainclothes officers arrived at the Norwood Palace Sports Bar on Fulton Street, 19-year-old Donovan Wilson ran out of the venue and pointed a .25-caliber handgun at cops, the Daily News reports. The officers — who apparently were wearing their badges around their necks — fired at the teen, hitting him in the chest, elbow, and leg. Wilson survived, though according to the Post, he was shot a fourth time, perhaps before police arrived. more ›

Earlier this morning, a shooting at the Norwood Palace Bar in Brooklyn has left one person dead and others injured. Around 3 a.m., patrons got into a huge fight and then, according to WCBS 2, "Two plain clothes officers with the anti-crime unit entered the bar in Cypress Hill, and that's when, police said, gunfire was exchanged." more ›

A few more details from the violent altercation on Euclid Avenue and Fulton Street early Sunday morning. According to the Post (check out the photo), "The melee began after a young woman told her friends that she was pushed by another person" at a Cypress Hills party around 1:45 a.m. A witness-turned-victim told the Daily News, "Two girls started arguing and then a dude stepped in and just started waving a knife around...He was really drunk," prompting one of the girls to take out her knife, "That's when it got really bad. There was blood everywhere. I tried to stop the guy from going after the girl with a knife. What does a guy have to go after a girl for? That's when he cut me - two times in the hand." A total of nine people were wounded, including one man who was chased up the stairs at the Crescent Avenue subway station and another who, per the Post, "was stabbed in the side of the head [and] then proceeded to walk about 4 miles to Jamaica Hospital." The police tell us no arrests have been made and that the investigation is ongoing. more ›

There was a violent altercation in Cypress Hills earlier this morning, near the J train's Crescent Avenue station. According to 1010WINS, "Apparently two groups of men ranging in age from 18 to 40-years-old, began arguing on Crescent Avenue and Fulton Street, police said. The arguing lead to violence when knives were pulled and six of the men were stabbed on the streets, and another man being chased down into" the subway station, where he was stabbed. Subway service was suspended. One of the victims was stabbed in the face; WABC reports that the seven victims were taken to area hospitals. The cops are looking for suspects. more ›

The NYPD raided a cockfighting facility in Cypress Hills yesterday, finding 59 caged birds, steroids, and thousands in cash. The Brooklyn DA's office explained, "There is no ring here, but they were breeding and housing them for the fights." The Daily News reports the birds were found with sharpened claws, "juiced on steroids," and their combs cut or shaved. The suspect claims, "I shave them because the weather is hot." Some neighbors told NY1 said they knew chicks were being raised, but didn't realize why, "When the little chicks hatch, sometimes they ran outside in the front," but others told the News they wouldn't miss the birds' screaming. Animal Control had to euthanize all the birds, except for a hen and four chicks. more ›

Yesterday was a crazy day at P.S. 108 in Cypress Hills: An man suspected of robbery ran into the school, while waving a loaded gun. About one thousand students (the school is kindergarten through fifth grade) were ultimately evacuated, many in tears. more ›

According to new NYPD statistics, graffiti complaints in Brooklyn rose 96% last year, with arrests in the borough increasing by 33%. Citywide, complaints almost doubled from 4,886 in 2006 to 8,866 in 2007, and total arrests rose from 2,962 to 3,786. Williamsburg leads the tagging trend with a total of 186 complaints. more ›

Photographs of a 7-year-old girl's battered body moved jurors in the Nixzmary Brown murder trial to tears yesterday. The prosecution showed crime scene photographs, featuring Nixzmary's dead body. The girl's stepfather Cesar Rodriguez is on trial for second-degree murder. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an escaped patient on the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens, a homicide on Bruner and Burke Aves. in the Bronx, and shots fired on Bainbridge St. and Lewis Ave. in Brooklyn.
• Jurors in the Nixzmary Brown murder trial were sent home for the second consecutive day Thursday as the defense, prosecution, and judge met in secret to discuss potentially bombshell evidence that's yet to be revealed.
• The NYPD is searching for three police impersonators who knocked on the door of a Cypress Hills, Brooklyn home last night and then pushed their way in, tying up and robbing the 77-year-old and 39-year-old male and female occupants. The robbers were wearing police windbreakers, sunglasses, and dark hats, with at least two of them brandishing pistols.

The FDNY was fighting a fire in a Cypress Hills apartment building when they found a dead woman. The authorities believe the 37-year-old was shot by her boyfriend and then set on fire, but the ME's office will determine the cause of death. more ›

As mentioned in Extra, Extra yesterday, 54-year-old Eunice Washington was killed when a livery cab driver ran over her - and it may have been on purpose. WCBS 2 had initially reported that the driver may have argued with Washington's 29-year-old daughter Santana over the fare, but now it turns out that the argument was more about the driver's rudeness. more ›

The five men who identified themselves as police before bursting into a Cypress Hills, Brooklyn home demanding to know "Where are the drugs?" were actually just thieves. WABC's Eyewitness News is reporting that the five men were dressed in police-type clothing, with one actually wearing a bulletproof vest and wielding a gun. They tied up two female residents and pistol whipped a man as they ransacked the home. An infant lying in a crib was not disturbed by the intruders. more ›

The death of Nixzmary Brown, the fourth death at the hands of abusive parents in recent months and whose abuse case was supposedly being investigated by the Administration for Children's Services, has led to an agency "shake-up": Three employees were suspended and three others were reassigned, with punishment to be determined. Of the employees who were suspended, one was the supervisor who let an investigation about possible abuse close, even though the 7 year old had missed 47 days of school, and the others were a supervisor and caseworker who, as Newsday puts it "oversaw the fiasco in which officials failed to gain the needed access to the victim's house." The social service workers' union rep criticized the actions, saying that more training is needed, not suspensions. ACS Commissioner John Mattingly also realigned ACS management, making his deputy commissioner the president of child safety and creating a Child Safety Task Forse. more ›

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Margaret Harper, NYC Public School Teacher more ›