Vehicular arson?
One of three cars that were burned in a trash fire early last Saturday morning was still parked on W. 10th St. on Monday morning.
Juvenile bank job
Police arrested a 12-year-old boy, his mother and a bank teller on Tues. Sept. 9 in connection with the $30,000 Aug. 28 robbery of the JP Morgan Chase Bank branch at 50 Avenue A at E. Fourth St.
Police said the teller, Monique Gray, 19, of Astoria, Queens, admitted to Ninth Precinct detectives that the boy’s mother Tamara Rivers, 34, of Harlem River Dr., had told her the day before the robbery that she would hurt her if she didn’t hand over $30,000 to the boy the following day. Police noted that Rivers weighs 350 pounds.
The youngster walked into the East Village bank branch at 9:49 a.m. Thurs. Aug. 28, passed a note to Gray that said, “I have a gun, give me $30,000,” and walked out with the cash, police said. Gray confessed that Rivers gave her $15,000 the day after the robbery, according to police.
The boy, whose name was withheld, was charged with juvenile delinquency. Rivers and Gray were both charged with conspiracy and robbery.
Teen rampage
A group of teenagers rampaged through Spring, Varick and Dominick Sts. in Hudson Sq. at about 5:30 p.m. Mon., Sept. 15 according to witnesses and police at the First Precinct.
Carol De Saram, a Tribeca resident who was going home at the time, said she saw the group beating a bicycle messenger in the street at the intersection of Varick and Spring Sts. and strewing the contents of his bag in the street. She said she saw more than a dozen black youngsters, boys and girls, ranging in ages between 12 and 16, chasing a victim through the Manhattan Storage parking lot that extends from Spring to Dominick Sts. between Hudson and Varick Sts.
An attendant at Manhattan Storage, whose glass-front counter faces the parking lot, said he saw about seven or eight boys and girls running through the parking space and walked out to investigate. “I surmise from what they were saying and from their manners that they were gay kids who were angry at someone who called them fags,” he said.
The desk sergeant at the First Precinct said the incident was “a group of disorderly adolescents — unruly kids. They were sent on their way. There were no charges of assault or theft.”
West Village Fire
A trash fire during the early hours of Sat. Sept. 13 on W. 10th St. just east of Washington St. in the West Village spread to three parked cars, destroying one of them and damaging the other two.
Neighbors who live in a co-op at 277 W. 10th St., surmised that the fire, which began in cardboard that was stacked on the street for recycling pickup on Saturday, was set by young revelers who frequent the Village waterfront at night on weekends. The fire happened across the street from the Village Community School, a private elementary school building that was recently expanded with a new addition.
Vivian Weisner, a resident of the co-op and parent of a student at the school, said, “This sounds like an arson situation. We have 144 apartments here and I fear for the safety of school, too.” Weisner said a Department of Sanitation worker who was cleaning up the street later Saturday morning told her that a similar fire was started in recycling trash on Christopher St. near the Archives residential building a few weeks ago.
A Fire Department spokesperson said the call came in at 4 a.m. reporting a trash fire but subsequent calls indicated that a car was also on fire. An engine and a ladder company responded and the fire was extinguished by 4:35 a.m., the spokesperson said.
Bobst Library death
A New York University student jumped 10 stories to his death into the atrium of the Bobst Library at 4:45 p.m. on Fri. Sept. 12, police said. The victim, John Skolnik, 20, of Evanston, Ill., left no note. He was declared dead at St. Vincent’s Hospital shortly after 6 p.m. John Beckman, a spokesperson for the university, said, “It’s a very tragic event and saddens the N.Y.U. community to lose one of our students this way.” Asked if it was the first time in the library’s 31-year history that someone had leaped to death in the atrium, Beckman said yes.
Noho assault
An Asian man told police that a stranger approached him at the corner of Bowery and Bond St. at about 3 a.m. Sun., Sept. 15, made anti-Arab remarks and punched him in the face before fleeing. The victim refused medical attention. Police are investigating the assault as a bias incident.
Shotgun death
Police found the body of Christian Beltpaire, 53, in his apartment at 208 W. 23rd St. shortly after 2 p.m. Thurs. Sept. 11 with a gunshot wound to the head, apparently self-inflicted. A shotgun was found near the body, police said.
Bank jobs arrest
Police arrested Raymond Masi, 44, at a bank in Queens on Sept. 11 and charged him with more than 40 bank robberies in Queens and Manhattan over the past two and a half years, including one on May 2 at a Dime Savings Bank branch at 340 Sixth Ave. in the Village.
Hate graffiti
An anti-black slogan, spray-painted on a window of the New York University Dental School at 345 E. 24th St., was reported to police at 4:30 p.m. on Mon. Sept. 8. Police are investigating the bias incident.
