Results tagged “teenagers”

Two shootings and a stabbing in Fort Greene yesterday "were the result" of a cheap chicken wing event at a nearby eatery, according to the commanding officer of Brooklyn's 88 Precinct. High school students from across the borough flocked to a 40-cent wing promotion at Buffalo Wild Wings on Atlantic Avenue — then things got dicey. Here's how NYPD Captain Anthony Tasso described the crimes to the Times blog The Local:

One Brooklyn Heights resident alerted fellow neighbors about possible gang activity in the neighborhood this week, after spotting four unruly teenagers on Hicks.

A sixteen-year-old Queens boy has confessed to firing the the shots that killed thirteen-year-old Kevin Miller just after the end of the school day at nearby Campus Magnet High School. Nnonso Ekwegbalu of Laurelton was arrested on Saturday night and admitted to being the one to pull a gun and fire the two shots that left Miller dead and injured a 17-year-old employee of the car wash where the fight that sparked the gunshots was taking place. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters yesterday that there was an arrest and that Ekwegbalu has "made statements" in regards to the Cambria Heights shooting. Reports did not mention if they found the orange shirt that Ekwegbalu was allegedly wearing that initially led them to arrest and quickly release a Campus Magnet football player soon after the shooting.

A Queens high school football player was picked up for the shooting murder of a 13-year-old at a nearby car wash despite the suspect's coaches insisting that he had been at school preparing for practice. While police have now announced that they arrested a teenager in the shooting death of young Kevin Miller, it turns out that the current suspect in custody was not the first one arrested. 16-year-old Nmesoma Okafor was taken out of his Campus Magnet locker room in Cambria Heights in handcuffs late on Friday afternoon because cops said he fit the description of the shooter—namely that he was wearing an orange shirt.

The 13-year-old boy who was fatally shot just after getting out of school on Friday was an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire. Kevin Miller, a freshman at Campus Magnet Humanities and the Arts High School, was using extra allowance he had received for doing chores and good grades to go to McDonald's with a friend when he ended up the victim of a stray bullet that came flying when another group of teenagers got into a fight at a nearby car wash and someone began shooting. Last night police took a teenage suspect into custody for the shootings of Miller and a 17-year-old worker at the car wash who was shot in the leg and is in stable condition. The suspect is undergoing questioning and awaiting charges.

Not even an hour after the Friday school bell rang at a Queens high school, a freshman was killed during an after-school fight. Soon after school was let out at Campus Magnet Humanities and the Arts High School (aka Andrew Jackson) in Cambria Heights, a fight broke out among a group of teenagers, ending when one of the broke out a gun and fatally shot 13-year-old Kevin Miller in the head.

40-year-old Jonathan Huff, a Bronx high school dean who was just named Teacher of the Year in 2007, was arrested on charges of sexually abusing and forcibly touching a 14-year-old student. The incident at the all-male school allegedly took place over a weekend on one of the campuses Taft High School in Mount Eden.

Police are looking for a teenage trio responsible for a new mugging spree in the West Village and SoHo. The gang of two males and a female in their late teens went on a tear early one morning a couple weeks back, hitting up four victims in less than five hours. The Post reports the first robbery took place as the bar crowd spilled out onto the streets of Greenwich Village just after four in the morning on August 28th. The initial mugging occurred at Washington Place and Washington Square West and the three subsequent incidents were all within a short distance from there. The trio is then suspected of committing a fifth robbery on August 31st on West 9th Street. The gang is said to have flashed a knife at their targets, but none of the victims were injured. The two male suspects were described as 5-foot-9 and 145 pounds and the girl thief as 5-foot-4 and 115 pounds, police said. Last year the West Village was on alert after a spate of violent muggings went down in a small area.

The gang of young men who were so incensed by last year's victory for President Obama that they "decided to go after black people" were sentenced today for their two separate Election Night attacks. The four Staten Islanders, known as the Rosebank Krew will now spend the four years of Obama's term behind bars. Three of them received sentences hovering around five years and one got a stiffer nine years for beating up a 17-year-old Liberian immigrant and putting a white man they believed to be black in a coma for weeks after running over him with a car. 19-year-old Ralph Nicoletti (pictured) received the 9-year sentence; he has had a rap sheet since he was 14 and at one point point attacked Michael Contreras because he thought Contreras was the snitch. (Nicoletti said he had become "upset" because Contreras repeatedly tried to sell him drugs.) Nicoletti believed he deserved a lighter sentence for cooperating, but a judge disagreed, saying his crimes were "perpetrated by pure hate that was born out of ignorance."

A Staten Island man may have prevented the rape of a local 15-year-old girl when he heard her screams from inside the woods near his home and immediately raced out wielding a baseball bat. The girl was walking to a friend's house on Cleveland Avenue in Great Kills Thursday night around 9:30 p.m. when she was dragged into the woods by her neck by a man described as a heavyset Hispanic male, about 5-foot-5 and about 200 pounds. The girl said to her attacker, "Please don't rape me," and he responded, "No, don't scream."

A teenager in Brooklyn was gunned down while walking home from a party just after midnight last night. 15-year-old Craig Shelton was preparing to be a sophomore at Metropolitan High School and recently learned he was expecting his first child with 17-year-old girlfriend Tania Moore. Friends say Shelton was not feeling well when he left the East New York party around midnight and was shot multiple times across the street on Euclid Avenue. Shelton was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting; police did not offer any motive or say that they had any suspects. His grandmother said, "He was a good boy. He never got into any trouble." And the four-months pregnant Moore told the News, "I don't know what I'll ever say when the time comes, when our baby asks where their daddy is."

The Department of Education has suspended a 57-year-old social studies teacher who has a long history of making students uncomfortable with his over-friendliness. Jonathan Polayes of Hostos-Lincoln Academy of Science in the Bronx has taught in city schools since 1989; accusations around his inappropriate touching began in 1994. In 2001, Polayes was found guilty of touching a student and suspended without pay for a semester. The latest investigation leading to the suspension began in January with a 15-year-old claiming he touched her on the thigh and now up to ten other girls issuing complaints. Polayes made the girls uncomfortable hugging them, patting their bottoms, tickling them and "carrying one 11-year-old girl, cradling her like she was a baby." The DOE released a statement saying, "He has ignored previous warnings and disciplinary action, and it is unfortunate that it is so difficult to fire someone who obviously does not belong in the classroom." The investigation has been forwarded to Bronx DA for potential charges against Polayes.

A teenager in The Bronx yesterday was arrested after stabbing his three younger siblings because he was "seeing demons" and was "zombielike." 17-year-old Nelson Santos was at home in his family's Claremont apartment when he picked up a butcher knife and attacked his two brothers Miguel and James, ages 13 and 6, and his 9-year-old sister Ashley. Santos's mother and a neighbor fetched by one of the brothers eventually wrestled the teenager down and took the knife from him before cops arrested him and took him into psychiatric care. Neighbors told the Daily News that Santos practiced black magic and John Flores, the 19-year-old man who intervened, told reporters, "He said the world was going to end so he had to kill his brothers and sister." Ashley Santos only suffered superficial wounds and 13-year-old Miguel is in stable condition after being stabbed in the chest five times. The youngest brother, James, is in critical condition at Columbia-Pres after being stabbed in the back.

A school bus ride for the nine young summer campers at the Magic Carpet Day Camp turned tragic when their driver dropped dead of a heart attack and collapsed out of the bus while driving yesterday in Queens. Ramon Fernandez, 47, died after losing consciousness while stopped at a red light behind the wheel of a camp school bus in Elmhurst. Fernandez then collapsed out of the door he was keeping open while stopped in order to get additional ventilation into the un-air conditioned bus. When Fernandez fell out, 16-year-old camp counselor Rachel Guzy leaped forward and reached for the emergency brake as the bus slowly rolled into another vehicle in the intersection. The bus matron had minor injuries, but all of the Bayside campers were unharmed. An 11-year-old on board told the Post, "He was driving with the door open because it was really hot, and he felt really hot. It's not normal...Me and my friend, we were in the front near the counselor. She was crying, very nervous after it happened....[Rachel] saved our lives because she pulled the brake."

City lifeguards have been getting nothing but bad press these days, but yesterday afternoon at a pool in Queens they came to the rescue of a young girl who was being sexually assaulted. Lifeguards at Fisher Pool in East Elmhurst were quick to respond when 20-year-old Julio Ajpacaja jumped in what locals call "a kids pool" around 4:30 and began groping a 13-year-old girl, asking her if she "wanted to play." Ajpacaja was pulled out and the cops were called in, eventually charging him with forcible touching and endangering the welfare of a child. Paramedics examined the girl at the scene and witnesses say she was visibly shaken, but not seriously injured. One witness told WCBS 2, "That's sick, that's nasty, a grown man … what are you doing messing around with little kids?"

With beach lifeguards doing their part over the past couple weeks to demonstrate just how terrified we should feel swimming beneath their easily-distracted watch, now lifeguards at city pools are making sure we know that they can be negligent too. Yesterday, Luis Peralta, 25, a lifeguard at the Highbridge Pool in Washington Heights, was arrested for dunking a teenager after he joking he would drown anyone who had jumped in while the pool was being cleaned. A fellow teenager told the News, "The lifeguard came in and started drowning the kid. He was basically on top of his head, pushing down with his hands — and he was counting [out loud] up to 5 or 6." Peralta was charged with a misdemeanor for reckless endangerment. The mother of the boy dunked told the Post, "What [the lifeguard] did was very dangerous...I gave him permission to go because I felt safe with him going there, but now I don't feel safe." Just last week, two teens were arrested at the same pool for scuffling with cops when they refused to leave the pool in a similar situation.

Friday morning a Port Authority cop faced off against a group of nine gang members aboard the PATH and took them all down without having to step off the train. Officer John Roche was fetched down while aboard a PATH train in Jersey City by 37-year-old Shine-Amon Sky around 6 a.m. Friday. Sky had woken up after dozing off during his morning commute to find one of the young Bloods nearby had stolen his cigarettes. The large group of teens and young adults then pounced on Sky when he confronted them about it. When Officer Roche tracked down the gang and saw how poorly his odds looked against so many of them, he ordered the train conductor to lock down the train just past the Grove Street stop as he waited for backup. Once his fellow officers arrived, they were able to round up all nine of the Newark gangbangers, who were charged with everything from riot and disorderly conduct to recruitment of a street gang. Two of the female teenagers were also hit with making terrorist threat when they said that they would kill Roche as he apprehended them.

While yesterday's helicopter crash claimed the lives of nine, one pouty teenager who didn't feel like taking a chopper ride may have been what prevented a double-digit death toll. Italian tourist Paola Casali was eager to share how her 13-year-old son's reluctance to take a Liberty Tours helicopter led the pair to be running just late enough to miss out on the tragedy. The 42-year-old woman visiting from Rome had reserved seats for her and her son on the tour that would be taking off soon after noon. But when the boy was dragging his feet, the two did not arrive until 12:40, just in time to see the aftermath of the accident. She suggested their tardiness was due to potential divine intervention saying, “What is so strange is that this morning Lorenzo felt so nervous and did not want to fly today. He wanted to stay behind in a Starbucks." Casali hung around and talked with other witnesses who had showed up at Liberty and learned that no more tours were being given yesterday. One tourist said that they would simply come back today, telling WABC 7, "I guess if it happens today, it won't happen tomorrow."

A day after a Bronx teenager drowned after getting caught in a Rockaway riptide, the Parks Department is suspending a lifeguard who was photographed wearing his iPod headphones while working at a nearby beach. Mayor Bloomberg was quick to lash out at the unnamed city employee, telling reporters, "He certainly wasn't doing what he was supposed to be doing." The mayor also urged anyone on the beaches who spots something similar to call 311. Beachgoers in Rockaway told the Post headphones on the lifeguards who start out making $13.50 an hour are just the tip of the iceberg—one resident said, "Half the time, they're chatting with people. They're listening to music. They're on their cellphones. They're texting with people." The lifeguard in the photo could be fired if he has been on the job for less than a year; it'll at least be a consideration after a hearing if he's been around longer. A Parks Department spokesman said, "This is an unacceptable violation of our regulations, which is not representative of the dedication and diligence displayed by the vast majority of our over 1,300 lifeguards."

A 19-year-old man from The Bronx drowned in Far Rockaway yesterday where he and his girlfriend had been enjoying a day at the beach. 19-year-old Daniel O'Neil swam outside the designated area near the East Rockaway Inlet near Beach 25th Street around 3 p.m. Lifeguards eventually pulled O'Neil out and and FDNY EMTs took him to St. John's Episcopal Hospital, where he was pronounced dead an hour later. O'Neil had just graduated from Mount St. Michael High School and volunteered in the rectory of Sacred Heart Church in Mount Vernon. He was set to attend John Jay College in the fall and hoped to one day be a lawyer. His aunt told the News, "He was a young kid who wanted to prove to himself that he was a young man. He was full of life, full of youth." Lifeguards say that there has been a strong riptide over the last two weekends, forcing an unusually high number of swimmers to be pulled out of the water. The National Weather Service has tips here on what to do if you are caught in rip currents.

A couple of young men in the Bronx had the head start on their weekend ruined in the wee hours of Friday morning when cops rolled up on them and hit them with summonses for drinking in public and disorderly conduct. That prompted the pair to strike back at police with a vengeance, trading in their hooch for some genuine hard stuff, purchasing motor oil from a nearby BP gas station in Bedford Park. The two then poured the oil on a cop car in front and tossed a lit match on it. The problem for 18-year-old Michael Bower and 22-year-old Carlos Ortiz is that the BP wasn't the only station nearby—the 52nd Precinct was right across the street. A lieutenant heading in spotted the melting bumper and the two were promptly put on the wrong side of the law for the second time of the night. Police sources said to the News, "Braniacs these boys are not," and, "They are pretty stupid...They did it right on camera." The squad car ended up with only minor damage and a police source said that with a new paint job, it should be back on the streets in no time.

The Queens teenager accused of killing WABC radio newsman George Weber was back before a judge inside a Brooklyn courtroom yesterday. John Katehis, the sixteen-year-old who allegedly responded to Weber's sex ad on Craigslist and the brutally cut him up inside Weber's Brooklyn apartment, was denied bail yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court. The East Elmhurst teen has apparently not toned down his act from the time of the arrest when his MySpace page revealed Katehis calling himself a Satanist and posing for self-portraits with knives. When he showed up in court yesterday, the prosecutor noted to the judge, "He has even written on his sneakers 'Satan' and 'Arch-enemy,' " to go along with tattoos on his arm of a pentagram, "666" and the word "Diablo." A lawyer for Katehis said that the writing on his shoes simply referred to a heavy metal band.

Legendary former principal Frank Mickens died in his sleep yesterday. The 63-year-old Mickens was famous for turning around Bed-Stuy's Boys and Girls High School, described in the News as "a national symbol of an oversized, out-of-control inner-city high school" when Mickens began his twenty year reign in 1984. Mickens was often controversial for policies like instituting school uniforms and issuing long suspensions. A Brooklyn blog calls him "a no-nonsense disciplinarian..he patrolled the halls with a walkie talkie, often with a bullhorn." NY1 talks to a former student who said, "I honestly haven't met anyone who can hold a candle to him...4,000 students in there, and he knew each and every one of us." A Facebook memorial group already has over 250 members and includes the comment from his granddaughter: "If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, I would walk right up to heaven and bring (you) back." Memorial services will be held for Mickens next Friday and Saturday in Bed-Stuy.

A 19-year-old Upper East Sider has been arrested in connection with three anti-gay attacks that took place in the neighborhood, two of which drew headlines for occurring during the recent Pride weekend. Driton Nicaj was charged with aggravated harassment and robbery as hate crimes after being picked up near his home on East 84th Street. Police say that Nicaj has confessed to one of the robberies and admitted to being a witness on-hand during the mugging of Joseph Holladay (pictured), the former Village Voice staffer who was mugged and called a faggot by a group of teens while he was down from Boston during Pride weekend.

Usually if two eighteen-year-old males are in a car that ends up in a weekend fender bender on the Jersey Shore, most would assume that the youngsters had some culpability in the accident. That's not necessarily the case when the other party involved is comedian Artie Lange. The Howard Stern Show co-host was arrested yesterday at 1:30 p.m. in Toms River for driving under the influence and careless driving after rear-ending a 2004 Pontiac Grand Am with the two teens in it. The arresting officer said that he was unsure if Lange was under the influence of alcohol or illicit drugs, but that Lange was a "a perfect gentleman" throughout the incident. The former MadTV star was released a few hours later and is schedule to appear tonight at a nearby library for a reading of his new book, "Too Fat to Fish." Lange has struggled with alcohol and drug problems and recently revealed that he had been sober for over two months. Upon buying a house down at the Shore last year, other members of the Stern team believed it would "help him out with his mental state."

School's out—here comes trouble. Two teenagers have been arrested after they went on "an anti-Semitic spree" on Thursday afternoon in Manhattan. Two boys, 15 and 16 respectively, drew swastikas in black Sharpie on walls at both the Bialystoker Synagogue and the United Hebrew Center on the Lower East Side. At the Hebrew Center, they also lit off smoke bombs; at the synagogue, they hurled eggs and also wrote an anti-Semitic slur on the wall. The synagogue happens to be the East Broadway temple where Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has worshiped since he was four years old. Silver told NY1, "This is a crime, not against the synagogue; this is a crime against society. When people choose to desecrate a house of worship, it doesn't matter whether it's a church, a synagogue. It is just a despicable act that really should tug at the heartstrings of all of us." It's believed that a nearby surveillance camera led police to the two teens.

A Staten Island couple isn't too thrilled with a city bus driver after he did the bare minimum to help their son following the 14-year-old boy being suckerpunched in the face. Anthony Paramithis, a freshman SI Technical High School, had just gotten onto the S78 bus when another teen clocked him from behind. An onlooker asked the assailant why he hit the smaller Paramithis and he replied, "Because I felt like it." When the driver learned what happened to the bloody-mouthed teen, he replied, "There's nothing I can do about that," and then let the attacker off at the next stop, a quarter-mile from the nearest precinct. The Fort Wadsworth boy's father told the SI Advance, "He left my son bleeding to death, and then he lets everyone off the bus so they can run?" But the MTA says the driver acted properly, notifying his command center and not getting involved in the altercation. Paramithis has his jaw wired shut for the next three weeks and can only eat "protein shakes, soup and anything else that will fit between his teeth." His parents told WCBS that his 14-year-old attacker confessed after being picked up yesterday by cops.

When a group of intoxicated teenagers decided to pop in to 33-year-old bricklayer Scott Bruno's pad on Saturday night, he must have thought that showing off his 2nd floor Bensonhurst apartment (and possibly dealing them drugs) wasn't enough to impress the Wantagh teens. So police say that Bruno got out his gun and began firing off some shots at his wall as a "party trick." Then believing that he had removed the magazine from the pistol, Bruno aimed the gun at 17-year-old Philip Levy's head and pulled the trigger. Sadly it wasn't empty and Levy (pictured) would die soon after being shot. Bruno is now being held without bail on manslaughter and weapons charges; he has a prior conviction for a DUI in 2006. Levy's mother, who only knew her son was going out with friends Saturday, told Newsday that the MacArthur HS senior was a history buff and had "a passionate interest" in the 9/11 attacks. She said, "He was always cracking us up. He could have been in the theater." Bruno's legal aid attorney insisted in court today that the shooting was an accident and called it a "quirky" case.

With high school graduations quickly approaching, it’s time for the annual day where 17-year-olds look back on their twelve-plus years of free education and ditch any tender moments of gratitude or nostalgia in lieu of creating pure chaos: Senior Prank Day. Yesterday in Queens, Richmond Hill High School's pranks turned into a riot with ten students arrested and the school put on lockdown—all before 10 a.m. The arrests were spurred on when authorities arrived in response to a fire alarm students had pulled. On top of that, the Post reports that departing seniors "threw baby powder, oil, food, paint, barbecue sauce and eggs all over the school's second floor, causing a panic." Windows were broken and computers damaged. One student gave the paper a familiar story: "It was supposed to be a powder fight, but people started showing up with eggs and rice and bananas and shaving cream. It was supposed to be something minor." The ten students were charged with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.

As Stuyvesant High School prepares for prom this weekend and the end of the school year to follow, word is that their school librarian has been arrested and charged with sexual abuse. The News reports that 56-year-old Christoper Asch is accused of inappropriate behavior with male students where he "massaged students' shoulders and backs, touched bellies and ran his hand through kids' hair." The Department of Education intends to fire Asch after having him reassigned to the rubber room last fall. According to a report obtained by the Post, "He'd creep the boys out even more by smirking or whispering in their ears to be quiet while he groped them in the library." His lawyer told reporters, "Mr. Christopher Asch categorically denies engaging in any inappropriate conduct with students, and ... intends to vigorously defend the charges."