Entries from Gothamist tagged with 'queensda'
April 18, 2008
The Queens DA's office has charged a man with possessing and promoting child pornography after a tip from Illinois police that he had a how-to video on molesting children. Dominick Guerra, who lives in Ozone Park and works as a wedding/party DJ, was arraigned yesterday and could face up to six years in jail. According to the Queens DA's office, the Wheaton, IL police found two videos on the file-sharing site Limewire. One video depicted......
Continue Reading "Wedding DJ Busted for Child Porn"March 5, 2008
Another twist in the murder case of Queens dentist Daniel Malakov: The sister of his ex-wife - who remains in jail for plotting to kill Malakov - was arrested for threatening Malakov's brother. Natella Natanova was arrested yesterday after apparently approaching Gavriel Malakov in Queens and saying, "You do know if you talk, you will be the next to go," on Monday morning. The brother is a potential prosecution witness and Queens DA Richard Brown......
Continue Reading "Sister of Accused Murderer Arrested Over Threat"March 4, 2008
The father who wanted to give up his 6-month-old baby out of desperation has told the police he wants to surrender. Carlos Rodas, 27, was overwhelmed when his 14-year-old girlfriend and the mother of the baby left him to care for their daughter, so he, his sister, and her boyfriend, a livery cab driver, worked out a plan for the driver to leave the baby at a Queens fire house. The story of the......
Continue Reading "Abandoned Baby's Father Wants to Surrender"February 29, 2008
Testimony picked up again yesterday in the trial of three police officers for fatally shooting an unarmed man in 2006. The prosecution called friends of victim Sean Bell and the commanding officer of the undercover operation to the stand. Bell was to be married on November 25, 2006, and the night before, he and his friends were celebrating with a bachelor party at Club Kalua, a topless bar in Jamaica, Queens. Friend Hugh Jensen said......
Continue Reading "Sean Bell Shooting Trial: Top Cop, Bell's Friends Testify"February 29, 2008
Yesterday, the Post reported City Councilman Dennis Gallagher, the Queens politican accused of raping a woman last summer, was offered a plea deal that would "keep him out of jail and off the sex-offender registry" and possibly force him to resign office. Gallagher, who has maintained the sex (which occurred in his Queens offices) was consensual, was indicted by a grand jury last summer, but the indictment was dismissed last month, because the judge felt......
Continue Reading "City Councilman Offered Plea Deal for Assault Case"February 26, 2008
A former math teacher at MS 190 in Forest Hills was arrested for child endangerment after allegedly sending former and present male students lewd instant messages. Bradley Dieffenbacher, 33, of Long Island, had worked at MS 190 since 2000 until his resignation on February 14, when investigators confronted him. According to the Queens DA's office, between April 1, 2007 and February 20, 2008, Dieffenbacher instant messaged eight boys, ages 12-13, who were either current or......
Continue Reading "Queens DA Says Teacher Preyed Upon Students"February 9, 2008
The Queens DA's office and NYPD revealed new details about the killing of a Queens dentist. and why his estranged wife was arrested for murder and conspiracy. Daniel Malakov, who had been fighting with wife Dr. Mazultov Borukhova over custody of their young daughter, was gunned down at a playground last October when taking the 4-year-old to his wife for visitation. Borukhova was arrested Thursday night, months after her uncle by marriage, Mikahil Mallayev, was......
Continue Reading "Queens DA Says Slain Doctor's Wife Made 90 Phone Calls, Paid $19K for Murder"February 8, 2008
Three and a half months after Queens orthodontist Daniel Malakov was gunned down at a Queens playground in front of his young daughter, his estranged wife was arrested for his murder. Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova was charged with murder and conspiracy and taken to a precinct house from her Forest Hills home. Malakov's mother told the Daily News, "They're dirty...her whole family, mother, sisters, all of them are animals. They committed such a dirty act, and......
Continue Reading "Slain Dentist's Estranged Wife Arrested for His Murder"January 31, 2008
Queens DA Richard Brown announced an off-duty NYPD detective and his girlfriend were charged with promoting the prostitution of a 13-year-old Brooklyn runaway. Brown said, “This case is every parent and every child’s worst nightmare – made even more frightening by the fact that one of the defendants is a police officer who swore to uphold the law and protect the community he serves.” Detective Wayne Taylor and a woman he claims is his wife,......
Continue Reading "Cop and Girlfriend Arrested for Pimping Out Teens"January 24, 2008
Queens City Councilman Dennis Gallagher, whose office was raided last July after rape allegations and was indicted by a grand jury in August, is smiling - for now. A judge dismissed the indictment, believing the defense's claim that the "grand jury process was compromised." The jurors had complained the prosecutors were trying to make Gallagher look "foolish." Gallagher, who is married, admitted he had an affair with the 52-year-old accuser but said it was consensual;......
Continue Reading "Queens Councilman's Rape Indictment Dismissed"January 18, 2008
The family and friends of slain dentist Daniel Malakov yelled at murder suspect Mikhail Mallayev (pictured) in a Queens courtroom yesterday. Malakov was gunned down last year when he was dropping off his daughter to his ex-wife at a Queens playground. His brother yelled, "Hang him up!" as other yelled "Shoot him!" and "Take off his head!" when Mallayev left. Malakov and his ex, Dr. Mazeltuv Borukhova, were embroiled in a bitter custody dispute over......
Continue Reading ""Shoot Him!": Dentist's Murder Suspect Arraigned"January 17, 2008
Yesterday the police announced they arrested 61 people for larceny and insurance fraud after they sold their cars for parts and tried to claim they were stolen. The NYPD actually ran the Queens "chop shop" where customers would typically have a middleman drop off their cars. The arrestees include an NYPD officer, a school safety officer, a city buildings inspector, an area hospital's security director and a registered sex offender. The Post reports the cop......
Continue Reading "Chop Shop Sting Nets 61 People, Including Cop"January 15, 2008
On the day that MySpace agreed to work with 49 states to stop sexual predators from using the social networking site to find young victims, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown was announcing a disturbing 56-charge criminal complaint against a couple accused of rape, sexual abuse, and forcing two young teens into performing sexual acts at a Manhattan strip club. Julio Rojas, a stripper, is being held on $500,000 bail while his wife, Sophie Soto, also......
Continue Reading "Queens Couple Charged With Assaulting MySpace Minors "January 12, 2008
Cathedral High School has a top reputation as an all-girls high school of the Archdiocese of New York. However, this past week has been rough: Teachers from Cathedral, as well as from nine other Catholic high schools, had a sickout. Plus, a former teacher admitted to assaulting students. The sickout occurred because non-clergy teachers have been in a contract dispute with the Archdiocese. The Lay Faculty Association's Anthony Cusimano told NY1 they wanted to negotiate......
Continue Reading "Not a Good Week at Cathedral High School"December 21, 2007
If lawyers for the detectives involved in the Sean Bell case get their way, the venue for a trial may be moved out of Queens. The attorneys for Detectives Mike Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper met with Judge Arthur Cooperman and prosecutors yesterday to notify them of their intent to move the case out of Queens. Oliver and Isnora are charged with manslaughter while Cooper is facing reckless endangerment in the shooting death......
Continue Reading "Attorneys for Cops in Bell Case Ask for Venue Change"December 14, 2007
Last weekend, a young woman was celebrating her 19th birthday when two men crashed her party and later raped her. The police arrested one of the suspects yesterday and are still looking for the second. Saturday night, James Moye and Daquan Williamson apparently tried to join the party in a Queens Village home. One even "whipped out a black handgun" but they left the house after a fight. However, they stayed in a van outside......
Continue Reading "One Arrest, One Still Wanted in Rape of Queens Teen"November 28, 2007
Prosecutors having intimate relationships with defense lawyers happens on TV shows all the time, but a real life drama is playing out in Brooklyn. Former prosecutor Sandra Fernandez, accused of using her position in the Brooklyn DA's office to give information to her defense lawyer fiance, was arraigned on 12 counts of criminal charges. Fernandez allegedly ran criminal history and motor vehicle checks on three prosecution witnesses in cases handled by fiance - and now......
Continue Reading "Ex-Prosecutor's Pillow Talk Brings Criminal Charges"November 24, 2007
On November 25, 2006, groom-to-be Sean Bell and his friends were leaving the Kalua nightclub in Queens when undercover police confronted them. In the confusion that ensued (the police thinking the men were armed or were going to the car to retrieve a gun, uncertainty over whether the police identified themselves leading Bell and his friends to think they were being carjacked) five undercover cops fired 50 times at Bell's car. His friends Joseph......
Continue Reading "Vigil Marks One Year After Sean Bell Shooting"November 20, 2007
The Department of Education is charging a temp with stealing $50,000 in fake overtime. The tip off? When Tyrone Avila would claim he was working 85 hours a week - when he really supposed to work less than 40 hours a week. The Daily News reports that Avila had been temping as budget analyst for the DOE since 2001, but "he didn't start padding his time sheets until 2005 when his mother-in-law developed mental problems......
Continue Reading "As Easy as ABC, DoE Temp Steals $50K"November 6, 2007
A bookkeeper for a Manhattan printing company pleaded not guilty to killing his 13-month-old daughter. Peter O'Keffe was arrested on Sunday after his wife returned to their Queens home after running errands on Saturday, to find their child unresponsive on the floor and her husband missing. Prosecutors say that O'Keeffe hit the baby in order to make her stop crying. From the Queens DA's office:According to statements made to police following his arrest, O’Keeffe admitted......
Continue Reading "Father Accused of Killing Baby Pleads Not Guilty"November 3, 2007
The Queens DA's office is allegedly split over how to handle a Halloween night fight in Howard Beach. A fight erupted on the Cross Bay Boulevard between a group of white youths and a group of black and Hispanic youths. The white youths, after feeling intimidated by a black or Hispanic youth, threw eggs at him, and then a melee broke out when 30-40 others, some with sticks, fought the white youths. Five black and......
Continue Reading "Debate Over Hate Crime in Howard Beach Clash "October 27, 2007
Queens prosecutors announced yesterday that a teenager acting as a drug mule was arrested at JFK airport on Tuesday. Anthony Cruz, 16, was stopped by customs officials as he arrived on an American Airlines flight from Santiago in the Dominican Republic. X-rays of his body revealed 80 balloons of heroin with a total weight of 988 grams (nearly 1 kilo and more than 2 pounds). According to officials, the heroin was worth $500,000. Richard Brown,......
Continue Reading "Drug Mule Reined In at JFK"September 29, 2007
The 22-year-old St. John's University student who brought a loaded .50 caliber rifle to the Queens campus on Wednesday was arraigned in his hospital room at Bellevue yesterday. Communicating via a video link to the Queens Criminal Court, Omesh Hiraman appeared "frail in his blue pajamas" (NY Times), while he "hands shook and he "rocked back and forth" (Daily News), but seemed lucid during the proceedings. Judge Deborah Stevens Modica ordered that he be given......
Continue Reading "St. John's Gunman Arraigned, Psych Exam Ordered"September 28, 2007
Omesh Hiraman, the 22-year-old St. John's University student who caused panic when he brought a .50 cailber rifle on campus, will be arraigned today in his hospital room at Bellevue. Queens DA Richard Brown said that Hiraman was being "held on two counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon (with intent to use said weapon unlawfully against another and possession of a rifle in a building or grounds used for educational purposes) and several......
Continue Reading "Lawyer Says St. John's Gunman is Schizophrenic"September 10, 2007
In May of 2000, five employees of a Wendy's in Flushing were killed in the basement, while two others were injured. John Taylor and Craig Godineaux were arrested and charged with the murders. While Godineaux pleaded guilty to the crimes and is serving a life sentence without parole, Taylor, a former Wendy's employee, was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2002. In the years since Taylor's sentence, the NY State Court of Appeals ruled,......
Continue Reading "Wendy's Massacre Murderer Appeals Death Sentence"August 23, 2007
The NYPD revealed that they have arrested four members of the Crips gang who robbed four bodegas in Queens in just three hours on Sunday. Queens DA Richard Brown says that the four, Gregory Burrowes, Jeremy Edwards, Keon Gill, and Ryan Carter would target mom-and-pop stores, with only bandannas covering their faces. They "walked down the street robbing one bodega only minutes after having robbed another." Employees whose stores were robbed provided clues that led......
Continue Reading "Police Arrest Serial Bodega Robbers"August 17, 2007
Police believe that 14-year-old Mohammed Nasser acted in self-defense when he fatally stabbed his stepfather on Wednesday night. Nasser said, "Well, he threatened me and my family, so I had to do what I had to do to protect my brother and my mother and my other little brother." Newsday reports that Nasser's stepfather Arturo Moreno was drunk when he arrived at the Ozone Park home he shared with Nasser's mother, Arwa Moreno, Wednesday night.......
Continue Reading "14-Year-Old Kills Stepfather to Protect Mother"August 12, 2007
We all knew the real estate bubble was causing insanity, but we should have known it's encouraged people to divorce. There's a NY Times Styles section article about some who wait until the market's at its peak to divorce - that way, they can benefit from an even bigger profit when selling their homes. There are quotes from Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker, who showed that couples with a drastic rise in net worth were......
Continue Reading "Times Weddings By The Numbers: Divorce For Sale"July 11, 2007
The police raided the office of Queens City Councilman Dennis Gallagher yesterday - and they were looking for DNA evidence of a sexual assault. The Juniper Park Civic Association President Robert Holden told the Sun he saw police officers taking evidence, "They just had boxes they were carrying. Bags and boxes of their tools." The Post got details of the alleged crime: Gallagher met the woman at Danny Boy's, a bar where he's a regular,......
Continue Reading "Queens City Councilman's Office Raided"June 22, 2007
Jack Rhodes, the man suspected of robbing and beating elderly woman in Queens, was indicted yesterday on 35 charges of burglary, assault, robbery, and, yes, hate crimes. The NY State Hate Crimes Act has a provision that allows hate crime charges to be filed if the defendant has selected a victim because they are old. Queens DA Richard Brown said, “In just over nine weeks, the defendant is alleged to have beaten and robbed three......
Continue Reading "Granny Mugger Indicted; Charges Include Hate Crimes"
