Results tagged “weillcornell”

Brooklyn resident Dwight McPherson has been identified as the employee at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center responsible for the extraction of tens of thousands of patients' ID information. McPherson said he was approached by an Atlanta-based ID-theft ring and sold his first batch of 1,000 names, phone numbers, and social security numbers for $750. The hassle of having one's credit ruined and identity stolen apparently has a street value of 75 cents.

The police have released a sketch of the suspect who attacked and robbed a man of $149,000 in cash on West 56th Street on Friday. The incident, which occurred around 2PM, scared Midtown pedestrians as a shot was fired. But in spite of the number of witnesses, the suspect got away.

A 30-year-old man lost his life last night after locking himself out of his apartment. Sometime between 8:15 p.m. and 8:40 p.m., Paul Reilly fell five stories, landing on his back in the courtyard behind the building where he lived on 65th St. and 1st Ave. in Manhattan. Reilly, who had apparently gained entrance to the building but was locked out of his apartment, attempted to climb out a hallway window, over to a window in his apartment. "It was just an accident. He fell," a friend told the Daily News.

There's trouble brewin' at everyones favorite chain coffee shop. WCBS is reporting that there has been a shooting at a midtown Starbucks. The BNN confirms with a location: 120 W 56th Street, and reports a possible robbery as well. The NYPD are currently still looking for the suspect.

A psychologist was slashed to death in her office building at 79th Street and York last night. Another therapist was seriously injured; the suspect is still at large.

The Thursday night fire in a Bedford-Stuyvsant brownstone that left a 3-year-old child in critical condition seems to have been caused by her playing with a butane lighter. There is also a tragic coincidence: In 1992, an apartment fire claimed the life of a 1-year-old sister.

When fighting a fire in Bedford-Stuyvesant, firefighter saved a three-year-old girl who was left alone in a house on Stuyvesant Avenue. The FDNY responded at 7:23PM and heard the girl's cries coming from the rear of the house.

The two men who fell more than 40 stories, when the window washing rig they had just stepped onto collapsed, were brothers. Edgar and Alcides Moreno were Ecuadorians who had come to the U.S. and lived in Linden, NJ. They worked for City Wide Window Cleaning and were regular fixtures at the Solow Tower Apartments building on East 66th St. The brothers were just starting work yesterday morning when they may have stepped on to...

An Upper East Side lingerie shop was robbed yesterday by a man posing as a vacuum cleaner salesman. In what the New York Post describes as a "Panty Raid," a black man in his 40s or 50s was let into Lingerie & Company on 3rd Ave. and 71st St., where he bound the 77-year-old clerk in the back room and robbed the store of cash and merchandise. The Daily News writes that the "Park Ave. matron" was fooled into buzzing the robber in when he gestured that he was delivering a Dirt Devil vacuum.

The health scare of the season continued this week with news of an outbreak of the methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) "superbug" at an Upper East Side hospital's children's ward. The New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center said that nine infants were infected with the drug-resistant strain of bacteria that killed a New York 7th Grader last month. Omar Rivera Jr. was felled by the staph infection on October 14th after being misdiagnosed at Kings County...

Mayor David Dinkins, who preceded Mayor Giuliani in office from 1990 to 1993, had his appendix removed in an emergency surgery Friday when it was determined that he was suffering from appendicitis. Dinkins was actually visiting his doctor for a routine flu shot, when he complained that he had a sharp pain in his side. A CAT scan revealed the inflamed and infected appendix--a condition that can be lethal if the vestigial organ bursts.

The red tow truck sitting in a crater at 41st Street and Lexington Avenue, right where an 83-year-old steam pipe exploded Wednesday evening, will be towed out today. The Daily News reports that Con Ed is preparing to remove the truck, and because there are live electrical cables in the hole, the "crews may use nylon wire, which won't act as a conductor, to hoist the vehicle from the pit." After the truck is removed, the utility will be better able to investigate what may have caused the explosion that killed one and injured many others.

The city continued clean-up at the site of Wednesday's Midtown steam pipe explosion at East 41st and Lexington Avenue. Vanderbilt Avenue has been reopened, and Third Avenue was scheduled to be reopened today. Clean up of 42nd Street between Third and Park should be done by Monday, while clean up of Lexington between 42nd and 43rd should be done by the end of the weekend. Here's what the city said about the asbestos samples:

The Department of Environmental Protection tests of 12 air samples showed none of them testing positive for asbestos. The steam, humidity, and rainfall probably helped the situation because it prevented asbestos particles from becoming airborne.

Continue reading "Frozen Zone Shrinks As Clean Up Work Continues at Steam Pipe Explosion Site"

Photograph by dietrich on Flickr

Everyone is still wondering how a woman fell through a sidewalk grate and into a electrical power vault on West 51st Street yesterday morning. The Daily News reports the victim, 26-year-old Jessica Hinksmon, could have been electrocuted by the 13,000 volts of electricity from the transformer. Hinksmon cried for help before firefighters used a "confined space stretcher and tripod" to lift her out. One of the firefighters who rescued Hinksmon, Lit. Tom Donnelly of Rescue 1, told the Post, "It's a scary thing to be surrounded by almost a foot of mud and electricity."

The sad truth of being a pedestrian in New York City is that pedestrians have be on the defensive. On Sunday night, 23-year-old Sabina Paradi was crossing 37th Street at Ninth Avenue when a truck making a left turn hit her. The driver was "cited for failure to yield right of way," which means that the driver didn't stop for pedestrians.

A man was shocked after touching high voltage wires over a NJ Transit train parked inside Penn Station. The man had tried opening the train's doors, but when he couldn't, he climbed on top of the train. Authorities suspect the man may be homeless and was trying to get into the train to sleep. An Amtrak employee found the man, who was taken to New York-Weill Cornell Hospital for third-degree burns.

Hoorah! Leo, the snow leopard found abandoned in Pakistan, is now officially in the public eye at the Bronx Zoo. Last month, the State Department touted a very special arrangement with the Pakistani government, which allowed the 14 month old snow leopard to be sent to the Bronx Zoo temporarily, because Pakistan does not have snow leopard facilities. (Leo could not be relased into the wild because he never learned survival skills - he was found as a baby by a goat herder!) In return, the Bronx Zoo will work with Pakistan to develop a snow leopard program, which Leo would return to.

Yesterday morning's car accident involving a man suspected of stabbing someone in Rhode Island is profoundly crazy. Joel Noonan was trying to drive away from MTA police on Lexington Avenue when his Jeep Cherokee crashed into Nissan Pathfinder near 63rd Street, hitting pedestrians, with the Pathfinder ultimately crashing into a travel office window. One woman, Eve Maria Boisbel, was hit so hard that she, as Newsday reports, was "wedged inside a black metal garbage can between the gray SUV and the storefront." In fact, the Daily News calls the trash can a "lifesaving helmet" since the Pathfinder had crashed the trash can into the store.

Authorities found a hose that was attached from a gas line to the area where a home once stood at 34 East 62nd Street, making them believe that the line had been tampered. The building's owner, Dr. Nicholas Bartha, who claimed he would blow up the building in an email, is still at Weill Cornell Medical Center with third degree burns after being found in his building's rubble on Monday. Bartha had been in the middle of a messy divorce, and had been ordered to sell the four-story townhouse to pay ex-wife Cordula Hahn over $4 million. The NY Times looks at Bartha's divorce and how his family was driven away by his behavior, apparently "bursting into angry tirades" when his daughters would call him. And others say he had been acting strange lately, with a fellow doctor saying, "He went from being a socially acceptable oddball to being unacceptable." Hahn, who now lives in Washington Heights, only told reporters, "It's tragic."

As the weather gets better, we see more and more people jogging, bicycling, and rollerblading through the City streets. And when we see these same people coupled with an iPod, we just cringe and hope that Rocky soundtrack doesn’t distract from the yellow cab bearing down on them. But as it turns out, street athletes might want to be more careful with what comes out of the cab rather than the cab itself.

2006 does not seem to be a good year for Hansom Cabs. First there was that nasty accident that put a driver into a coma and led to a horse being put down, then came the ASPCA's very vocal push to get the 175 working hansom cabs out of the city entirely. Not to mention the recent push by the City Council to limit the cabs to only Central Park.

This morning, Irene Sinyavin is our hero. She just gave birth to her 11 pound, 10 ounce baby boy - naturally. And without pain medication. Sinyavin is 5'9" and her husband is 6'4", but you might not expect an a baby over 11 pounds. Weill Cornell Medical Center thinks it's the biggest baby ever delivered there, and from the picture in the Daily News, baby Alexei seems to have totally skipped that scrunched-up, old man face that most newborns have because they are much tinier.

Worrying about being hit by a car while walking is one thing, and worrying about being hit by a drunk driver is another. Diana Tafur was ejected from a minivan taxi when it was hit by drunk driver in a BMW. The BMW driver, Harzem Sendogan, ran a red light on East 84th Street at First Avenue, and Tafur was "ejected from her seat in the back of the van through a side window and onto the street," next to a parked car. After last week's hit and run on 14th and First Avenue, where a drunk driver killed a pedstrian, you'd think people would think twice about driving and drinking. Tafur was not wearing a seat belt, and is being treated for severe head injuries at Weill Cornell Medical. Sendogan was charged with driving while intoxicated and assault.

Last night, a dramatic fireball outside a building at Mercer and Houston exploded five stories, but luckily no one was seriously hurt, save one pedestrian whose head was scorched. The transformer was located in a metal grate outside 172-174 Mercer, and Con Ed thinks the fire was caused by a power cable burning out. A witness told the NY Post, "A great big fireball from underground just lit up the whole side of the building. It looked like that guy was trying to jump out of the way, but the fireball expanded. It blossomed and just crawled up the side of the building and his clothes were all on fire." Yikes! The fire last 30 seconds and firefighters were able to douse it pretty quickly. The man had second degree burns and was taken to the burn unit at NY Presbytersian/Weill Cornell and is now in stable condition.