Crime Blotter
LESS CRIME? The NYPD proudly reported again last week that there had been yet another dramatic drop in New York City's crime rate. Well, not for these people.
Twenty-year-old Queens resident Fernando Rodriguez must have been baffled on the evening of May 22, when five teens came after him swinging baseball bats. They beat Rodriguez soundly about the head and sent him to the hospital in critical condition.
They meant to hurt someone-just not Rodriguez. The teens had been arguing with another group of men earlier in the evening, and after going home to get their bats, mistook the innocent Rodriguez for one of the men they'd argued with. Oops.
The five have since been arrested.
After security guards nabbed a shoplifter at Macy's over the weekend and placed him in one of the store's holding cells, he tried, almost successfully, to hang himself with shoelaces. At last reports he was in critical condition. Two questions come to mind: First, what are they making shoelaces out of these days? That's the second attempted shoelace hanging in a month. And second, umm?Macy's has holding cells?
We have to believe that Da Silvano has had better weeks. First, a British princess lets loose with some racial slurs Monday evening, then some guy who lives upstairs shows up at the sidewalk cafe with a stab wound.
The victim, 20-year-old Christopher Schenone, got into an argument with his stepbrother Michael Lee, who stabbed him in the side. A bleeding Schenone then ran downstairs, screaming for help. To ensure the young man didn't bleed all over the fancy restaurant, the owner sat him down on a sidewalk bench, then called police. Schenone was taken to the hospital in stable condition, and his stepbrother was arrested.
Earlier on Tuesday, a traffic agent in Queens stopped to give some guy a parking ticket. As he was writing the ticket, one of your more slaphappy types shoved the officer, hopped in his vehicle and sped away,
The vehicle was found five blocks away, on fire. The carjacker was nowhere to be found.
On Wednesday afternoon, two EMS workers were delivering a 53-year-old homeless man to Bellevue for unspecified reasons. A few blocks shy of the hospital, the man socked the EMT worker who was in the back with him. When the driver stopped the ambulance to help, he was socked as well. The EMTs were treated at Bellevue, and the crazy man was taken to NYU Medical Center instead.
And finally, Todd Zarnock was walking home from a Brooklyn Home Depot shortly after midnight on Monday with a bag full of tools. That's when he was stopped by 33-year-old Juan Martinez who, for reasons unknown, punched Zarnock in the face, breaking his nose and knocking some teeth out. He then grabbed the heavy bag and ran away. Zarnock gave chase, but Martinez, either in an effort to lighten the load or just be mean, tossed the bag off a bridge into the Gowanus.
Martinez was later arrested, but those tools are long gone.