Results tagged “jamaica”

The mother of a 6-year-old Queens boy is outraged at police for what she's calling a slow response time to her son's disappearance yesterday. Shortly before 3 p.m., the boy was in the courtyard at P.S. 80 at dismissal time and managed to walk through the gate without anyone stopping him. He wandered Jamaica, traveling four miles from the school before finally being located at his father's Rockaway Boulevard office—two hours after he was found missing. And that's also when police finally showed up!

After a whole lot of hullabaloo about whether or not 50 Cent would get to perform on a Jamaica playground, the rapper returned to his Queens roots yesterday without any fuss. 50 even gave a shout out to the "MFin' cops" of the 103rd precinct, having the crowd point to the police squad as he told them, "You might as well come down and party with us, because we're not going to be doing anything else." Fitty said he hopes the peacefulness of yesterday's festival will be enough to do it next year and avoid the fuss that included Mayor Bloomberg saying "Gee, you not" performing to the megastar rapper.

The controversial free Family Day concert scheduled for tomorrow inside a Jamaica public schoolyard, organized by 50 Cent, has been postponed. 50 was originally supposed to put on a secret performance, but was downgraded to just making an appearance after fears arose of chaos or violence at the site close to where the rapper was shot multiple times in 2000. His manager told the Post, "We are postponing it and working it out with police." After Mayor Bloomberg got involved and made a point that 50 would not be performing, the rapper Q-Tip recently spoke out against the mayor and has been tweeting to his followers, telling them not to re-elect the mayor and saying that the idea that the concert would invite violence was "just an old way of thinking about folk, especially black folk. Tip told MTV, "[Bloomberg is] not right for the spirit of the city. 50 Cent is a success story we all should applaud. However you feel about him, you can't deny him." Maybe the show's sponsor, Bette Midler's New York Restoration Project, can just convince 50 to adopt-a-highway, putting the G-Unit back into the Gowanus Expressway.

Dispersing two winning lotto tickets in eight weeks is pretty good PR for your store. The NY Times reports that is exactly what has happened at Shiv Convenience Store in Jamaica, Queens. You may recall that one local won the $133 million jackpot there in July, and this past Sunday another man took home $66,053; both times the machine chose the numbers. Lottery HQ in Schenectady told the paper, "We have 16,000 retailers. When I saw the Shiv Convenience Store, I was like, ‘get out of here.’” In 2007 a similar streak happened at a store in Astoria (but three times in a row). Owner of Shiv, Bharat Patel, says he doesn't buy tickets at his own store because he doesn't want customers to think it's rigged, but he is very enthusiastic when a customer wins. When he discovered this week's winner, he lifted the man (a Popeye's employee who played frequently) off the floor, and screamed, "You won! You won!” Meanwhile, the Lotto is getting a makeover.

A Queens man says cops roughed him up in a holding cell at the 103rd precinct earlier this month, following a late night DWI arrest. 21-year-old Imran Ali was intoxicated when police allegedly slammed him into a brick wall and cell bars—which is the last thing he remembers before waking up at Jamaica Hospital handcuffed to a bed, with multiple staples and stitches on his forehead. He was arrested on July 17th around 4:54 a.m. after crashing his vehicle head-on into a parked car in Jamaica. But Ali insists he wasn't even the one driving the car (was it Harvey?) and his attorneys are demanding the Queens DA review video from the holding cell cameras. The NYPD maintains that Ali became combative and either fell or jumped from a cell bench. In a statement, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne says, "Contrary to his lawyer's assertion that Ali was a passenger in a car driven by someone else who was also arrested, Ali was alone and he was the only individual arrested." Well, somebody's fibbing, but regardless, you probably shouldn't click on this link to the 1010 Wins story unless you enjoy close-up photos of stapled skull wounds.

News of free, MSG-laden grilled chicken appears to have found its way into a Queens slaughterhouse, where one cow decided that all she had was one shot to make a run for it and somehow escaped onto the streets of Jamaica, Queens. After being loose for around an hour, the NYPD's Mounted Unit was called in and a trailer normally used for horses brought in to corral her. Initial reports were that she was being taken back to the slaughterhouse, it turns out that she'll be spared and likely brought upstate to Farm Sanctuary. A police spokeswoman told Daily Intel, "We always think that once they've escaped, they've earned the right to go free."

This week the Times's Frank Bruni piles on Shang, a restaurant in the Thompson LES Hotel helmed by the acclaimed, formerly Toronto-based chef Susur Lee, whose first mistake is making Bruni exercise: "The staircase was the first befuddlement and miscalculation I encountered — and a clue that the evening and restaurant might not be all I’d hope for. It’s a long, drab, foreboding rise of steps from the sidewalk to the host station, an entrance less inviting than aerobic. I’ve gone on runs that didn’t leave me as winded." As for the menu, some dishes are "intensely pleasurable," but overall it's "inconsistent and uneventful. The magic that Mr. Lee reputedly made in Toronto hasn’t followed him here."

Oh brother, this Valentine's thing is just not going to go away, at least not until Sunday. If you're single, mazel tov! But if you're a Gentleman in a Relationship with a Lady and you haven't yet made plans, it's about time to man up. Now, maybe you've got one of those "laid back" special ladies who's all down on the man and swears she doesn't want you to throw money away just because of some corporate bourgeois scam. Obviously this does not mean you're off the hook; it means there had better be something special in the works, just not a harried, overpriced prix-fixe in some crowded restaurant.

Yesterday afternoon, a gunman opened fire on a corner in the Jamaica section of Queens, near a housing project, around 4:45 p.m. Off-duty MTA bus driver Andre Saunders Jr. and Lemarr Wilson were killed, while a 17-year-old was injured. According to the NY Times, Saunders "was well-liked in the community and was also known for filming videos for local musicians and rappers, friends and relatives said." It's believed he was filming a video during the time of the shooting. The MTA Bus Company called Saunders a "valued employee" and his sister told NY1, "He was a genuine uncle, a genuine brother, a genuine husband, and a genuine friend. He wasn't a gangster or drug dealer. He had a job."

Two men were shot in the head and found dead just after midnight on Christmas in front of the apartment of one of the victims in the Jamaica section of Queens. Police are still investigating and have not revealed any motive behind the shootings of 42-year-old Andre Stokes and 34-year-old Jamel Griffin, both of whom the Daily News notes "had troubled pasts with numerous arrests." Griffin left behind a young son and was expecting another. Murders and shootings have risen in Jamaica this year. Griffin's grandmother, who previously lost a 15-year-old son to a shooting said, "There is nothing worse than losing your child to a gun."

The police are searching for a gunman who fatally shot 56-year-old John Bazemore. Bazemore was found in his Jeep in the Jamaica section of Queens on Saturday night, and the Daily News reports that he may have been "trying to flee from robbers when he was shot, sending his 1994 Jeep careening into several parked cars." The NY Times adds that Bazemore, a furniture mover who had two children and five grandchildren, may have been killed for winnings from playing dominoes earlier in the evening.

A Queens barbershop owner is in critical condition after being shot in an attempted armed robbery Friday night. As one robber entered Rah's Barber Shop in the Jamaica section of Queens and was confronted by its owner, a second man emerged from the back and shot the proprietor in the chest. The victim's name was only given as Raheem by a friend. Once he was shot, a group of up to five people wrestled the attackers down to the ground as two children (including Raheem's son) were rushed to safety in the back. Raheem is being attended to at Mary Immaculate Hospital.

A yard in Jamaica, Queens was excavated by police after a convicted murderer said he dumped another body there. Gregory Wynder, who is serving a life sentence for the 2001 murder of a Harlem woman, has claimed he killed two other women--claims that Queens detectives believe are true--in a South Jamaica home where a girlfriend lived.

Police are still looking for men who abandoned a BMW in Queens after a fatal crash that left a 5-year-old dead. The accident occurred in the section Jamaica, at 109th Avenue and 164th Place.

A 5-year-old boy was ejected from a Ford Escape when a BMW crashed into it around 1a.m. this morning. According to police, the accident occurred at 109th Avenue and 164th Place.