Volume 16 • Issue 33 | January 16 – 22, 2004
Police blotter
A Chinatown biker trekked through the snow near Canal St. and Broadway on Thursday.
Missing actor
Spalding Gray, 62, the performer and writer who starred in the film “Swimming to Cambodia,” was reported missing from his home on Wooster St. after coming home from a movie with his wife and their two children on Saturday night Jan. 10.
Severely depressed since June 2001 when he suffered head injuries in an auto accident in Ireland, Gray made two suicide attempts in 2002 near his home in the Hamptons.
“We’re very worried,” said Sarah Vass, a friend who is helping Gray’s wife, Kathleen Russo, to find Gray. “It’s been five days and its cold and snowy, and Spalding is still missing. His son, Theo’s seventh birthday is coming up next week and Theo is asking if his dad will be there,” Vass said.
Russo, who is also Gray’s manager, reported the disappearance to the First Precinct on Sunday night, Jan. 11. Gray left no note at his Soho or Hamptons home or at the Wooster Group, the experimental theater he helped organize in 1977 at the Performing Garage, a block north of his home.
“We last saw him at a performance in December,” said Joel Bassin, manager of the Wooster Group. Gray appeared at the theater from October to mid December in a monologue, “Interrupting Life,” about the auto accident and his life since then.
Vass said Gray had a ticket for a flight from La Guardia Airport to Aspen, Col. for Saturday but rescheduled it for Sunday morning. He did not make the Sunday flight and his wife reported him missing that night.
Vass said she had heard that a man corresponding to Gray’s description had been spotted on the Staten Island Ferry on Friday the night before he was last seen. Because Gray’s previous suicide attempts had involved water near his Hamptons home, Russo feared his presence on the ferry suggested that he was contemplating another attempt, said Vass.
Sexual abuse arrest
Police arrested Isaac Jahudi, 23, of 2842 Grand Concourse, the Bronx on Wed. Jan. 7 accusing him of committing sodomy and sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman on Nov. 20 near the F.D.R. Drive and E. Houston St. The suspect, a stranger to the victim, had threatened that he had a gun and forced the victim to an alley where he attacked her, police said.
D.O.A. on Canal
The medical examiner is investigating the cause of death of Yuk Lam, 73, of Brooklyn, who was found unconscious inside 198 Canal St. near Mott St. shortly after noon on Sun. Jan. 11. The victim was taken to NYU Downtown Hospital where he was declared dead on arrival. There was no sign of trauma, police said.
A.T.M. grab
A woman who was withdrawing cash from an A.T.M. at 175 Water St. at 5:30 p.m. Tues. Jan. 13 was robbed by a man who came from behind, wrested her bag away from her and fled, police said. The bag contained $60 in cash, credit cards and personal papers.
Commercial break-in
A thief or thieves broke through the entrance of 111 John St. sometime before 2:30 p.m. Thurs. Jan. 8 and then forced open a second door, entered a store and made off with $250 in cash and an undisclosed number if cell phones and other electronic equipment, police said.
Soho snatch
A woman walking on Broadway at Prince St. at 1:30 p.m. Mon. Jan. 12 lost her bag to an unknown snatcher, police said.
Store rampage
An employee of a store at 435 West Broadway near Prince St. told police that a group of 20 or so young men walked in and removed numerous boxes of cologne, coats and sweaters from display ads and then fled.
—Albert Amateau
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