A Brooklyn man who got into a knife fight with a loan shark which inadvertently led to a 13-year-old girl's death is claiming that he had been acting in self-defense. Kenneth Risher is charged with fatally stabbing loan shark Shawn Lewis; Lewis had attempted to flee the scene in his SUV, but ended up running down 13-year-old Kira Goddard. And the whole tragedy was over $40. more ›

Unlike most knife fights, this one seems to have a happy ending. Murder charges have been dropped against Lucali pie man Mark Iacono and reported Genovese family associate Batista Geritano related to the April daytime meleé in a Carroll Gardens deli. As predicted, because both men refused to speak to authorities about what exactly happened inside the now-closed Joe's Superette, authorities had little to bring before a grand jury. "They've been uncooperative," a spokesman for the DA in the case told the Brooklyn Paper, "They haven't been talking the whole time." Iacono and Geritano reportedly have known each other since childhood, and the spat was reported to have been caused by a love triangle between the two men and Geritano's girlfriend. more ›

Both ex-con Benny Geritano and Lucali's Pizza owner Mark Iacono have been charged with assault after a knife fight on Friday left them both in the hospital, and right now neither of them are speaking to police about how the fight started. One possibility is that Geritano, an associate of the Genovese mob, was trying to make Iacono pay up. “One motive being looked at is the possibility he was trying to shake down the owner for a slice of the business,” one official told the Times. more ›

A party aboard the cruise ship "The Temptress" turned deadly early Saturday morning as five men were injured in a brawl. Witnesses said that there was a minor dispute within the party of 400 as they boarded the boat at 12:30 a.m., but it cooled down after everybody started drinking. But as they disembarked at 4 a.m., another fight broke out, this time with weapons. One ship employee told the Daily News, "I think [it was] a fight about a girlfriend. But it just sounded like drunk stupid stuff." The five wounded men are expected to survive, and police have three men in custody. Last August, a man was killed after attending a party cruise at the South Street Seaport. 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 ›