Results tagged “family”

Ah, fresh meat! After pleading guilty to staging their ridiculous hoax involving their 6-year-old son Falcon and a runaway helium balloon, fame-hunters Richard and Mayumi Heene were granted permission by a Colorado judge to visit New York City. The purpose of their trip? An unspecified "employment opportunity." See? Exploiting your children and deceiving an entire nation pays!

Given the sometimes scurrilous nature of anonymous website commentary, it's often regrettable when the families of victims read blog posts about deceased loved ones. So we're relieved that the comments on Gothamist's coverage of the devastating mistaken-identity murder of 21-year-old Glen Wright have been heartfelt. Wright, beloved by his family and the community, was tragically slain Saturday by a gang of men at the Lower East Side's Baruch Houses, which Wright was visiting to help his grandmother. The funeral is Saturday morning (details), and those commenters who've expressed their condolences to Wright's family should know that one of Wright's sisters has, we believe, made this remark to you: "On behalf of the Glenn Wright family we just want you all to know we are aware of your concern and reading your messages. We appreciate everyone's support. Our brother was as phenomenal as described and he will be missed. We intend to keep his legacy alive and thriving through various humanitarian and community support efforts. At this time EHTP is designated as the official trustee and representatives on behalf of the 'Glenn Wright Fund.' Please direct all of your inquiries or contributions to them. Thank you from the entire family."

It can sometimes spell trouble when an Off-Off Broadway production features cast members of a certain age; seniors willing to perform for peanuts have been known to sink otherwise competent ensembles with an awkward amateurishness. It's hard to say whether Rae C. Wright is in fact an AARP card-carrier—she's in impeccable shape, for one thing—but her appearance in Tina Satter's sort-of-musical Family initially gave me pause. It shouldn't have. Far from scuttling the show into a community theater morass, she electrifies Satter's enjoyably daffy production with an incisive, intelligent humor, portraying the matriarch (Mum) of a once-prominent family in decline.

The family of a man who died from a lacerated liver during an altercation with correction officers at Rikers Island will sue the city for $10 million. Clarence Mobley, 60, was in custody at the jail on May 2nd, awaiting a psychiatric evaluation related to robbery charges, when he "took a swing" at an officer with a metal tray. He was subdued and placed in a holding cell, and was later found dead. Yesterday the medical examiner ruled it a homicide, finding that Mobley died from a tear in his liver caused by a blow; NYPD investigators are still looking into the incident. Mobley had taken a bus from North Carolina to NYC on April 25th to attend a family funeral, but he never contacted his family when he arrived, for reasons unknown to them. Five days later he was arrested trying to break into an apartment in Queens. His son Darian tells the Times, "Everybody is hurting. My father didn’t deserve that. He was a little guy." The civil lawsuit is just the latest related to a death at Rikers, where corruption among the guards is allegedly endemic.

This morning yet another NYC family made the unsettling discovery that a snake had slithered into their apartment. (That's right, another—previously on home snake invasions: "Mom, there's a Boa in the couch!" and "Honey, there's a python in the pipes!") Maria Dominguez, a 37-year-old flower shop worker and mother of three, spotted the five-foot long, tan-colored snake (not pictured) under a living room table around 7 a.m. today. She tells the Daily News, "I don't know how it got there. I woke up, and the snake was just there." Dominguez herded the kids into a bedroom and called 911, which dispatched Emergency Services Unit cops to take the snake into custody. They managed to trap it with a broom and a plastic bag, and gave it over to Animal Care and Control, which is testing to see if it's venomous. The crisis was over in about an hour, and it's not known where the snake came from or how it got in. But Dominguez says "I want to move now," which suggests the work of a disgruntled neighbor who's just sick of her noisy kids.

In an Op-Ed in today's Times explaining his aborted mayoral campaign, Rep. Anthony Weiner explains that, unsurprisingly, Mayor Bloomberg's godly fortune had a little something to do with it: "The Supreme Court decision in 1976 in Buckley v. Valeo, which allows candidates to spend however much they want on their own races, makes it possible for billionaires to swamp middle-class candidates. In this case, a sports analogy is apt: If one football team has 110 players on the field, the team with 11 has a hard time getting through the blocking and tackling on the crowded turf."

After saying last week that they were encouraged by their sister's progress, today the brothers of chimp mauling victim Charla Nash further discussed how she's doing on the Today show. Steve Nash said, "The psychiatrist says she understands a lot about her injuries, but she’s not interested at this time to find out how they occurred... We’re positive all the time we’re with her.... telling her she’s in the best place in the world to help with her injuries, and that she had an accident and we’re going to take care of her." Nash, who lost her nose, lips, eyelids, hands and bone structure in her mid-face, is at the Cleveland Clinic; Steve is staying in Cleveland while her twin Mike is in Connecticut, taking care of her 17-year-old daughter. Mike said, "She’s got to know that we’re still here for her and there are still a lot of reasons to keep hope there, tell her that that she has a daughter and a future and she needs to be part of it." The Cleveland Clinic says she "has made significant neurological and psychological improvement" but "Full cognitive recovery could take up to a year" and many surgeries are planned.

Over 1 million pages of documentation detailing the airlines' and security companies' handling of the 9/11 terrorist attacks will remain secret, a judge indicated yesterday. The motion to make the documents public was filed by three families of victims who died that day; according to the Daily News they are the last remaining holdout families out of nearly 100 who chose to pursue litigation against the airlines rather than accept a settlement. In suggesting that he will rule against the motion, Judge Alvin Hellerstein said his immediate goal is to set a trial date for the families, and forcing the turnover of the documents would only delay that process. But the families are hoping the trial will expose the airline industry's negligence in failing to stop the hijacking. Plaintiff Michael Low's daughter was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, which hit the north tower; she relayed the seat numbers of the hijackers to the ground so federal agents could identify them. He tells the Post, "This just didn't happen because the 19 thugs were so smart. Some of them were terribly inept."

According to columnist Liz Smith, family members of Natasha Richardson were left with no choice but to take the actress off life support at 1:30 p.m. Richardson allegedly went brain dead sometime after suffering a critical brain injury while skiing in Canada on Monday and she was transported to New York yesterday.

     

Did Alex Rodriguez pick this up from master media manipulator Madonna? With a phalanx of reporters and photographers covering his every move at World Baseball Championship training camp in Jupiter, Florida yesterday, the Yankees sluggers showed off his daddy side as his ex-wife Cynthia Rodriguez bought their two young daughters—Natasha, 4, and Ella, 10 months— for a visit. And it was unusual:

• "Rodriguez was the only player who visited so visibly with his children, the only player who had at least one crisis manager trolling the back fields of Roger Dean Stadium, and the only player who had to answer questions about meeting with major league officials on Sunday." —NY Times
  Continue reading "A-Rod & Co.: Alex Rodriguez Puts Family On Display"

The family of an emotionally disturbed man who fell ten feet to his death after being Tasered by a cop has now filed a lawsuit, surprising no one. You'll recall, with attendant wave of revulsion, that after the incident made headlines last September, the NYPD admitted that the use of the stun gun appeared to violate department guidelines. Then the grief-stricken lieutenant who ordered the Tasering committed suicide. It was a horrible story all around, complete with grisly video. And according to the AP, the family of the victim, Iman Morales, isn't just suing the city, the NYPD, and two officers involved in the incident—they're also suing the estate of the officer who committed suicide. They're seeking $10 million in damages; a spokesperson for the city law department called it "a very tragic case."

The NY Times examines the phenomenon of more Manhattan families who opt to stay in cramped apartments, instead of moving to bigger homes in the 'burbs. One example is a internist and a labor nurse (plus two kids) living in a $3,995/month Greenwich Village rental--though spacious, there's a "queen-size bed, a crib, a toddler bed and a dresser" wedged in the sole bedroom. Then there's a Lower East Side couple who gave up their bedroom for their two kids (the couple sleeps in a former closet). Census data says there are more white, white-collar families living in one bedroom apartments; Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge explains, "Oftentimes both parents are working and have lives in the city and don’t want to commute in and then worry about having to get back home. There is a much bigger traction to city life.”

Following the death of Heath Ledger, his grieving family was questioned endlessly about the actor's will, which was written before his daughter Matilda was born. Now Ledger's father has publicly declared that every cent of the estimated $20 million estate (originally left to his sisters and parents) would go to Matilda, telling People magazine that was the plan "from the moment my boy passed away." Fox News notes that "Williams' father [Larry Williams, one of the world's best-known stock market traders] has previously challenged the grieving Ledger family to publicly state the value of their son's fortune." Meanwhile, TMZ is reporting that the ReliaStar Life Insurance Company, who wrote Heath Ledger's $10 million life insurance policy is in June of 2007, is "being sued after claiming the actor's death might have been a suicide, even though officials concluded it was accidental. Lawyers for Ledger's daughter say it's a transparent ploy to avoid paying the money."

The NY Post discovered Williamsburg today, twice! The articles contradict one another, however, and read as though they're describing two different neighborhoods instead of one in flux. One states that today's "Williamsburgers are families, established professionals" while the other says "young hipsters still rule." Well, which is it? The former declares that "as new luxury condos roll out along the waterfront and flank McCarren Park, upscale businesses are opening to attract an ever more well-heeled clientele (and their families)"; the latter asserts that "the new developments are geared to well-off singles and couples who want to be associated with the area's recent hipness. Catering to the development of a family neighborhood doesn't seem to be the objective." Ergo, Williamsburg is neither ideal for the ironic fanny pack set, nor for the sincere fanny pack set...or is it both? Discuss.

What's the craziest thing you've ever encountered underground? Try to trump this Park Slope family's disturbing, X-rated experience; Gowanus Lounge reports that they (kids and all) ran into a man being orally pleasured on the steps of the 15th Street F Station in Brooklyn. "As we entered the turnstile, I looked up towards one of the staircases, and saw a man sitting on the stairs receiving oral sex from a woman whom I recognized from the local women’s shelter. I was so shocked that I just stopped in my tracks, and the man actually made eye contact with me and smiled. " And then they all went for ice cream in Cobble Hill.

Last Friday, Rev. Timothy Wright, the pastor of the Grace Tabernacle Christian Center in Crown Heights, was critically injured in a car crash in Pennsylvania that fatally injured his wife and 14-year-old grandson.

Crain's reported some surprising supermarket news this week that would have made the Montagues and Capulets proud; Walter D’Agostino, one heir to the grocery store, has signed on with arch-rival Gristedes! He says he just wants to help save an ailing business, but his brother, the current president of D'Agostino, icily referred to his flesh and blood as “a competitor" when he heard the news from a reporter. Gristedes owner John Catsimatidis expressed confidence in his new hire's abilities, and declared "that this focus will lead to a significant change in the performance at [under-performing] stores."

It was a modern Father's Day for some of Kate Hudson's past and present beaus. Yesterday Hudson, her current boyfriend Lance Armstrong, his three children, Hudson's ex-husband Chris Robinson, and their son Ryder all attended a two-hour brunch in Brooklyn together in honor of Father's Day.

Two years after pleading guilty to falsely calling in a break-in and donning an orange Department of Sanitation vest while sweeping the streets of Chinatown (as part of his community service duty), Boy George has announced he'll play a private show for the NYC Department of Sanitation workers later this summer. From the press release:

Boy George will help celebrate New York City’s Department of Sanitation Family Day this summer! George will be playing a free concert as a big thank you for the kindness shown to him by the DSNY. On August 17th he will play all his Culture Club hits and more for a crowd of over 5,000 NYC Sanitation workers and their families at DSNY Family Day.

A West Harlem co-op fire eventually required the efforts of 170 firefighters to extinguish as it spread through the West 113th St. building 's second, third, and fourth floors. Despite the fast-moving flames, three sisters and their 34-year-old father were rescued from the fifth floor of the building before they were overcome by smoke.

On Tuesday afternoon, 72-year-old Reinaldo Herrera was hanging Christmas lights outside his Westbury home and went inside to get more lights. Suddenly, a 21-year-old gang member stormed in, threatening him with a gun and demanded cash and jewelry. Somehow, Herrera managed to overpower the would-be robber; the senior said, "When he say, 'Give me the ring, give me the watch, give me the money,' I put my hands on him, strong, to the floor." He...