CRIME BLOTTER
Perps and victims alike this week were both created and caught as a result of simply not stopping to think for a minute.
Take the case of Leopold Tavarez, the Brooklyn bodega owner who shot and killed an aspiring comedian ("You're just not funny!") on the night of Feb. 7. When cops arrived on the scene, Tavarez told them that the victim, 300-pound Charles McDay, who'd wandered into a nearby butcher shop and collapsed after Tavarez shot him in the chest, was trying to rob his store at gunpoint.
Cops took his word for it initially, but then the only gun they could find was Tavarez's own. Shortly thereafter, it came out that McDay and Tavarez had been involved in a long-running feud. It only took a few minutes after this revelation for Tavarez to admit that he'd just made up that whole "armed robbery" thing. Whoops!
The stories a 36-year-old Sikh man had been telling his wife fell to pieces on Sunday, Feb. 8, when he was shot and seriously wounded. That's when she discovered that he had been driving a livery cab, and wasn't really in Kuwait visiting his parents, like he said he was. According to his wife, he'd "visited Kuwait" for weeks at a time in the past. At last word, Michael Goldberg (he'd recently changed his name) was in stable condition after being shot in the chest. We expect he's going to have a lot of explaining to do when he gets out of the hospital.
What Martin Carrington and Wilson Alba had, you might say, was a failure to communicate. Carrington, an off-duty customs officer, was getting into his car in Bushwick about 1:30 Sunday morning when a probably-drunk Alba stumbled up to him, shouting in Spanish and grabbing at his arm. Carrington, not being fluent in Spanish and assuming he was being carjacked, struggled briefly with Alba before blowing him away.
Alba's aunt later told reporters that the victim likely thought it was his own car, and that Carrington was trying to steal it.
No charges will be filed.
A 15-year-old in Far Rockaway didn't pause to weigh his options on Monday, Feb. 9. He'd skipped a court date (possession of stolen property), and so the police decided to bring the court date to him. They arrived at his family's apartment at 7:30 a.m., and when the lad heard them, he did what any quick-thinking individual would do if he didn't want to go back to juvie: He decided to hide in the alcove. Unfortunately, the apartment didn't have an alcove, and he plunged five stories to the concrete below. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
And on Tuesday, as we all know, an 18-year-old Queens girl dropped her cellphone. That the cellphone had clattered onto the subway tracks while a V was approaching apparently didn't strike her as that big a deal. She just wanted to get that cellphone back.