Crime Blotter

HE STARTED IT Few things in this world are quite as creepy as two elderly men beating the crap out of each other, but that's what happened outside the Fairway Manor senior citizen complex in Patchogue on Friday, May 14.

Seems that 76-year-old Nicholas Longo went ahead and planted his damned tomatoes right there in front of 74-year-old Phil DeRosa's darned azaleas. That just wouldn't stand, a fact made clear to Longo. It's uncertain how long the two discussed the situation in a calm and gentlemanly manner before they started swinging, but DeRosa, who's been charged with assault, insists in proper schoolyard fashion that it was Longo who started it.

"He came at me like a wild man," DeRosa told reporters. "He missed me. Then I got lucky and broke his nose... When the adrenaline starts flowing, even at our age, you start whaling, and sometimes you get lucky."

Longo was treated for, yes, a broken nose and a cut on his shoulder.

Speaking of whaling, getting whaled on was probably the last thing Jimmy Victor was expecting when he wandered into the Vasquez Deli with a gun in his pocket. Victor, an off-duty "public safety officer" (which could mean almost anything) entered the L.I. deli on the evening of May 16 and ordered chicken and rice. Then he whipped out his gun and forced the counter man into a back room-a back room, much to Victor's surprise, filled with several large men playing pool.

Victor brandished the gun and, for reasons that are unclear, flashed a Nassau County park ranger's shield (as if that would impress anyone) and demanded that the men empty their pockets. When only a couple of them did, he tried to impress on them the gravity of the situation by firing his gun in the air. Then his gun jammed. Then the customers and some employees jumped Victor, beating the shit out of him. A while later, someone called the cops and paramedics.

As he lay all stitched and wired up in his hospital room, Victor was charged with attempted robbery, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal impersonation of a park ranger.

On Tuesday, Victoria Glover-a 39-year-old unemployed truck driver who went by the name of "Jesus"-was arrested at the Metropolitan Opera. She had apparently been stalking Beverly Sills for some time, and showed up at the opera house to ask for Ms. Sills' hand in marriage. She's being charged with harassment and stalking.

Finally, in a sad update, last week we reported the case of Bernadette Mamakas, who'd been searching for her missing son for nearly a month when she received a call from nasty Leon Grimaldi. Grimaldi claimed he'd kidnapped the boy and would return him safely if Mamakas met him at a bar and, um, treated him nice.

Last Monday, Mamakas' search ended when the body of her 22-year-old son Michael was fished out of Gravesend Bay. The cause of death has yet to be determined.