Blotter
CHOP SUZIE
All I remember from a miserable and brief attempt to teach myself Mandarin Chinese is that one of the phrases I was supposed to learn was "Mr. and Mrs. Chang are always rumbling and tussling in the back room. Alas, such things are common in married life."
This can be especially dangerous if the back room in question is in a restaurant. Maybe husbands and wives simply shouldn't work in restaurants together. So many potential weapons lying around.
This was sadly illustrated once again on Saturday afternoon when 29 year-old Riyi Jheng and his wife began rumbling and tussling in the Chinese restaurant they ran in East Flatbush.
What led to the scuffle is unclear, but it ended only after Mr. Jheng had allegedly thrown boiling water on his wife and attempted to chop off one of her hands with a meat cleaver. Although her hand remained attached, the chop did break her wrist and sever a major blood vessel.
While she is expected to recover and he's going to do a little time, it's unclear whether this low-rent General Tsao and his little dumpling will ever be a Happy Family again.
Last year, if you remember, it was jumping in front of trains. Every two or three days it seemed, there was another one. Anybody who was anybody was jumping in front of a train.
This year, the hottest trend around seems to be getting on the train first, then dying.
First there was the postal worker who rode back and forth for six hours. The week after that there was the stabbing victim who was discovered on the N train at the Coney Island stop. Then it happened again last Tuesday, for the third time in three weeks.
At about 4:45 that afternoon, a 33 year-old man on the northbound A passed out at the Fulton St station. He was dead by the time they got him to the hospital.
The M.E. will determine cause of death.
So who'll be next? Could it be you? Won't you be embarrassed if that bitch in math class goes and does it first? C'mon kids, get with it! Get on a train-and die!
NEW YORK'S SNEAKIEST
In the latest from the "What the Hell Were They Thinking?" department, 31 year-old Alvin Malcolm was stopped by a security guard in a Bed-Stuy Rite Aid late Monday afternoon, as he allegedly tried to saunter out of the store with the two cans of baby formula he'd pocketed.
Normally this would be no big deal-happens a hundred times a day around town-hell, in that very store even. The only thing that makes this case different, though, is the fact that Malcolm was, more precisely, Officer Malcolm, a 10 year vet of the NYPD.
Guess what they say is true: you work with nasty, vicious criminals all day long-killers, rapists, bank robbers-you run the risk of having some of that wickedness rub off on you. Fortunately, this guy only got enough to make him a bumbling shoplifter.
Officer Malcolm with be facing attempted petit larceny charges, and has been suspended from the force pending the outcome of the investigation.
There was perhaps some cause for this. Edwin Fondo Sr. used to be the chief surgeon for the Housing Authority police-but had been busted in 1989 on "sexual misconduct" charges, and had his medical license revoked 3 years later after he sexually abused several more women.
You figure okay, you've been disgraced in such a way, there's cause for taking a header, right?
Come Wednesday, though, after a few days in the ME's care, and the story had changed considerably.
Fondo, see, was most likely dead before he ever went out that window, after allegedly having been strangled by his 21-year-old son-a son who was generally described with adjectives like "crazed," and "psychopathic." He allegedly confessed to everything shortly after the detectives showed up.
What continues to amaze us, though, is that they keep being found. Are there just a whole lot of nosy people around who can't help but take a peek inside every discarded suitcase they come across?
Well, anyway, in this case it was a guy who'd been stabbed a bunch of times. Police are still trying to figure out the whos and the whys.