Police are investigating after a man and a woman in their 20s were found shot to death in a New Jersey park Thursday night.

Cops discovered the victims at approximately 10 p.m. near a bench inside Montclair’s Canterbury Park, NBC New York reports.

The investigation is ongoing. Relatives of the dead told NBC that the woman was from East Orange.

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Katherine Russell, the widow of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has hired a criminal defense attorney with experience handling terrorism cases.

Amato A. DeLuca, who has been representing Russell since Tsarnaev and his brother, Dzhokhar, were identified as suspects in the marathon attacks, announced Wednesday that Joshua Dratel has joined Russell’s defense team.

Dratel is president of the Wall Street law firm Dratel & Mysliwiec, P.C. In a bio on the firm’s website, Dratel lists his fields of expertise as terrorism, national security and violent crime charges, among others.

DeLuca’s Providence, R.I., law firm, DeLuca & Weizenbaum Ltd., handles mostly medical malpractice and personal injury civil suits.

Federal investigators want to know what Russell knew, if anything, about her husband and his brother’s plans to detonate two homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line.

Three people were killed and 264 others injured in the April 15 explosions, including a more than a dozen who suffered amputations. The Tsarnaevs are also suspected of killing an MIT police officer.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police April 18, just hours after the FBI released pictures of the suspects. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is recovering from gunshot wounds at a federal medical facility, charged with using a weapon of mass destruction.

DeLuca said Russell, who married Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2010, had no knowledge of the plot and is assisting with the investigation. The FBI would not confirm to the Associated Press that Russell is cooperating.

“Katie plans to continue to meet with investigators, part of a series of meetings over many hours where she has answered questions,” DeLuca said.

Russell has been staying at her parents’ home in North Kingstown, R.I., since Tsarnaev was killed, along with the couple’s 2-year-old daughter.

Follow Metro Boston on Twitter: @MetroBos

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A former New York state senator from Queens secretly recorded seven lawmakers as part of a political corruption probe, according to a court document unsealed Wednesday.

Shirley Huntley, 74, a Democrat who pleaded guilty in January to embezzling $87,700 from a nonprofit organization, recorded and photographed the officials on multiple occasions in the summer of 2012 after meeting with federal prosecutors and agents, according to the filing in Brooklyn federal court.

The recorded lawmakers include New York state Sens. John Sampson, Eric Adams, Ruth Hassel-Thompson, Jose Peralta, Malcolm Smith and Velmanette Montgomery, and New York City Councilman Rubin Wills. Huntley also taped conversations with Melvin Lowe, a former political consultant and associate of New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, and Curtis Taylor, a former press adviser for Malcolm Smith.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn declined to comment. However, it said in a separate court filing Tuesday that eight of the nine individuals recorded remain under investigation. No details of the investigation were provided. Huntley’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Wills said that his attorney had been informed by law enforcement that his client was not the subject of an investigation. Adams said he had not been contacted with regard to any investigation. Peralta he was confident authorities would find he did not engage in any wrongdoing.

Representatives for Sampson and Smith declined to comment. Representatives for the other senators did not immediately return a request for comment. The non-elected officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Two of the individuals who Huntley taped have already been named in federal criminal cases.

Last month, Smith was charged with bribery in connection with the New York City mayoral race. Sampson was charged Monday with embezzling funds from foreclosed properties in Brooklyn. Both pleaded not guilty.

The filing, a sentencing memorandum from Huntley, was originally filed under seal. After media outlets, including Reuters, requested that it be made public, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein unsealed the filing.

Huntley, who faces up to five years in prison, is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.

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The father of one of the two Kazakh students charged with obstructing the Boston Marathon bombing investigation is fighting to have his son released.

Amir Ismagulov told the Associated Press that his son, 19-year-old Azamat Tazhayakov,”would never intend to do anything bad to people in the United States.”

Tazhayakov and 19-year-old Dias Kadyrbayev, who’s also from Kazakhstan, are charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice by conspiring to destroy, conceal and cover up tangible evidence in the case.

Federal authorities say the two UMass Dartmouth students removed a backpack containing hollowed-out fireworks and a laptop from marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dorm room three days after the explosions, after the FBI released photos of Tsarnaev and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

The brothers are accused of detonating two homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15. Three people were killed and 264 hurt. The pair also allegedly killed an MIT police officer April 18 before leading authorities on a pursuit to Watertown. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in the confrontation with police.

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev allegedly threw Tsarnaev’s backpack in the Dumpster at their New Bedford apartment. Authorities later retrieved it from a landfill. His lawyer says Tazhayakov turned the laptop over to investigators and has been cooperating.

The two students face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. They also could be deported for staying in the U.S. with invalid student visas.

Tazhayakov’s father told the Boston Globe he traveled to Boston from Kazakhstan on April 25, five days after his son was arrested on immigration violations. Ismagulov said Tazhayakov repeatedly told him that he had nothing to do with the bombing and didn’t know Tsarnaev was involved.

According to Ismagulov, Tazhaykov said Tsarnaev is “not a human” if he was responsible for the attacks.

Ismagulov said he’s laid flowers at the makeshift memorial in Copley Square dedicated to the bombing victims at his son’s request, who asked him “to express condolences to innocent people who were hurt and killed.”

Tazhayakov and Kadyrnayev are due back in court May 14.

A third UMass Dartmouth student, 19-year-old Robel Phillipos of Cambridge, is charged with willfully making materially false statements to federal law enforcement officials during a terrorism investigation. He was released on bail Monday and will serve house arrest until his trial.

Follow Metro Boston on Twitter: @MetroBos

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The city of Cleveland remains in a state of disbelief Tuesday after news that three missing young women have all been found alive more than 10 years after their disappearances.

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight all seemed to vanish without a trace in separate cases that plagued the city’s police and media for years. Now, after all three were found in a house not far from where each of them disappeared, the people closest to the cases can’t wrap their minds around how something like this could happen — and go undetected for so long.

Amanda Berry, frantic and desperate to escape, was able to flag down a neighbor Monday evening and call 911, finally free from the home where she and the other young women had been held captive since their abductions. Inside the house, police found DeJesus and Knight, and a 6-year-old girl, believed to be the daughter of Berry — all of them in good health.

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  PHOTOS: The discovery of missing Cleveland girls 10 years later

Dorian Barrett and Duane Pohlman, investigative journalists formerly with the special projects department at WEWS in Cleveland, spent months working leads in the disappearance of Berry, who was last seen in 2003 at age 16, and Gina DeJesus, who disappeared in 2004 at age 14. They interviewed family members, combed the streets of Cleveland for a car matching the initial description and visited Amanda Berry’s bedroom in her family’s home.

Barrett describes hearing that the unsolved mystery, which consumed her thoughts as a journalist for so long, had finally come to a close — and with an ending she truly never expected.

“I don’t think the goosebumps on my skin have gone away since I heard the news,” Barrett told Metro. “I am absolutely stunned. I am so happy they were found. I feel a lot of emotions right now. It’s hard not to get choked up about these girls.”

Pohlman, who now works at WLKY in Louisville, Ky., had always hoped for closure in the case, but had expected it long before Monday.

“I wept,” he said. “I am on the verge of tears right now. I am so thankful, that is so many of these cases where the outcome is so much different, that they were alive. I am also disappointed that we never could find them. I am disappointed that the police couldn’t find them, and I am wondering how the hell [the suspects] got away with it.”

Immediately with news of their rescue came unanswered questions, especially burning for those who pored over these cases in search of any lead or clue. Why couldn’t the girls escape before now? How were they kept hidden for so long?

“If you have a young child, you might not take that risk,” Pohlman offered as a possible explanation for why Berry hadn’t tried to leave before Monday. “I wonder, how did he silence them? Was he drugging them? I don’t know. Or was there a room that was deadened in sound?”

A dead end in 2006

Barrett recalls a twist in their investigation in 2006 that had her believing they were about to locate Berry. A viewer of the Ohio lottery show “Cash Explosion” called the WEWS tip line certain she had spotted a girl in the crowd who looked eerily similar to Berry. Barrett and Pohlman reviewed the tape.

“It was an uncanny resemblance,” she said. “It was one of those things you look at and we all just kind of got chills.”

Even Berry’s sister thought the girl on the tape could be Amanda. They pursued the lead but in the end, the girl who appeared on the show was a college student who was not Berry. Barrett and Pohlman spent months looking into other possibilities, including human trafficking and kidnapping.

Were there any clues?

At the news the girls are alive and were being held mere miles from where they were taken, Barrett has racked her brain for any clue she may have overlooked, any lead that could have found them. During the investigation, which often included working with police detectives, they never looked at named suspect Ariel Castro, or his two brothers, who are also in custody.

“This came out of left field, in my mind,” Barrett said. “I am just floored where they were discovered. The name never came up, none of this information was anything we had seen or come across.”

She added, “I never held the assumption they were dead. I thought they had been removed from the city and the state.”

Pohlman, too, believed the girls were alive, but never ruled out that they could still be in Cleveland. He also held the belief that the disappearances of Berry and DeJesus were connected. Knowing now that’s true, other aspects of the case are clearer to him.

“They had a similar look,” he said. “The part that threw me was the different age group. But in true pedophilia, they move downward in age and try to keep them as young as possible for as long as possible.”

Last summer, investigators thought they had a break in the case when an inmate told them he had buried Berry’s body in a vacant lot. A search produced nothing and the inmate’s claim was determined to be a hoax.

The families of Berry and DeJesus always maintained that the girls were alive. Berry’s mother died of heart failure two years after her daughter went missing — family members have publicly stated they believe she died of a “broken heart.”

“There was something different about her mom that I couldn’t quite put my finger on,” Pohlman recalled. “She was insistent, almost obsessive, that her daughter was still alive, almost to the point of wanting to convince me. She combined it with this concept that [Amanda's abduction] was linked to a prostitution ring of some kind. She never really explained why she believed it, but it stuck with me.”

‘Were there others?’

Cleveland officials said this morning they are looking into other properties owned by Castro and haven’t ruled out the possibility that he could be involved in other disappearances.

“Were there others?” Pohlman asked. “If he did this with three women, my assumption is he had attempted or had done it with others. For every parent or relative of missing girl or woman, that’s what they are asking.”

He added that this case could lead to a conversation about how quickly law enforcement might assume a missing person is dead.

“You never want to give up the hope,” he said. “As long as there is no body, the possibility of that person still being alive exists. This is testament to all those missing persons. If you don’t have a body and you don’t have a death – that person is missing. Who gives up?”

Combination photo created from May 7, 2013 booking photos provided by the Cleveland Police Department show brothers Ariel (L-R), Onil and Pedro Castro. The brothers were arrested in connection with the abduction of three Cleveland women found alive after vanishing in their own neighborhood for about a decade.
Credit: Reuters

Other captivity cases

The cases of Berry, DeJesus and Knight are just the latest in a string of captivity mysteries that have shocked the nation and the world.

• Elizabeth Smart was held by her kidnapper for nine months in 2002.
• Jaycee Lee Dugard was held for 18 years beginning in 1991.
• Elisabeth Fritzi was held captive and and raped by her own father in Austria for 24 years.

Follow Cassandra Garrison on Twitter: @CassieAtMetro

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Police are investigating a shooting that injured five people in Newark late Thursday night.

Multiple shots were fired at approximately 10 p.m. in the city’s South Ward, according to the Associated Press.

Among the victims was a 10-year-old girl, according to various news reports. The victims were listed in stable condition Thursday night.

No arrests have been made and it is not clear what led to the shooting. The investigation is ongoing.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for an investigation into the hefty bonuses that a group of Con Ed executives collected for their work during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

He ordered Con Ed to freeze the bonuses this morning, according to a statement from his office.

The governor sent a letter to Con Ed’s CEO on Monday demanding that Public Service Commission review the bonuses and ensure that the cost of paying out the bonuses is not passed onto customers.

Cuomo also noted the poor performance of utility companies after the storm, saying it was a “complete failure.”

Four Con Ed executives split $614,400 in bonus pay last year for the challenges they handled following the storm. After the letter was sent, Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke announced that he would return his $315,400 bonus, the New York Post reported. Burke stood by his company, however, and said he continues to commend the work of all his employees.

The three other executives did not say if they would return their bonuses as of Monday night.

More than a million customers lost power due to the storm, and many city residents did not have power restored for several days. Some customers in other areas of the state did not have power return for more than a week.

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The correct name of the victim is Alphonza Bryant, police said.

Police have determined that Bryant was standing in front of the building when two suspects walked by across the street. The suspects returned a short time later and began shooting the victim.

Metro’s original story is below.

A 17-year-old male was shot and killed in the Foxhurst section of the Bronx on Monday night.

Cops responded to the call in front of 1159 Fox St. about 10:15 p.m. Alfonso Bryant was found with a gunshot wound to his chest.

He was transported to Bronx Lebanon Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Bryant lived a few blocks away from where he was shot.

No arrests have been made. The investigation is ongoing.

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Police are searching for a man who groped a 9-year-old girl in Manhattan last weekend.

Cops say the man approached the child about 4:45 p.m. Sunday and touched her buttocks. No injuries were reported in the incident.

The suspect is described as a white male in his 30s, approximately 240lbs. with black and some gray hair. He was last seen wearing a blue long-sleeve shirt, dark jeans and glasses.

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A 28-year-old man was shot to death in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn on Monday night, cops said.

Police responded to the call of a male shot inside 9 Bradford St. shortly after 11 p.m. Officers found the victim suffering from two gunshot wounds to his torso and one to his arm. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

No arrests have been made. The investigation is ongoing.

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An NYPD investigation in underway after a 10-year-old girl was found dead inside a Bronx apartment building Sunday.

Hawa Cisse was found by her mother around 11:25 p.m., unconscious and not breathing. There was no bruising or signs of trauma, cops said. Cisse was transported to Bronx Lebanon Hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

Her mother told police Cisse was sick and had a history of seizures.

The medical examiner will determine the cause of death, but a preliminary investigation shows no signs of foul play or maltreatment. The family had no history of domestic incident reports or involvement with the Administration of Child Services.

The investigation is ongoing.

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Police are looking for a man who attempted to rob a woman and then sexually assaulted her while she was walking her dog in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan.

The man approached the victim, 28, about 2 a.m. April 6 on East 27th Street, police said. He displayed a black handgun and demanded money and a cellphone. When the woman said she didn’t have anything, he sexually assaulted her and then fled the scene.

The suspect is described as a black male, approximately 6 feet tall and heavyset with a bald head. He was last seen wearing a dark-colored sweatshirt with a bubble vest.

Anyone with information in regards is asked to call Crimestoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). The public can also submit tips by logging onto the Crimestoppers website or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577.

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Police are searching for a man who struck a woman in the face with a ketchup bottle at a West Village diner in an alleged bias assault, cops said.

The man approached the 33-year-old victim inside Waverly Diner on Sixth Avenue at approximately 4:40 a.m. on April 1. He made some anti-gay statements and then hit the woman with a ketchup bottle, causing a laceration to her forehead, police said.

The suspect is being described as a black male, approximately 6-foot-1, weighing about 200 lbs. He was last seen wearing a dark-colored baseball cap, a grey baseball-style shirt with dark sleeves, blue jeans and dark-colored sneakers.

Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). The public can also submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577.

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The FBI informant in the mayoral ballot bribe investigation that has led to the arrests of state Sen. Malcolm Smith and Queens Councilman Dan Halloran is a business developer who owes Citigroup $126 million over a failed real estate project, according to various news reports.

Moses Stern, 40, is the man who helped the FBI secretly tape conversations with the senator which revealed a plot to bribe Republican county chairmen to get Smith on their ballot in the upcoming mayoral race.

But Stern is accused of plotting a fraudulent deal of his own. His realty firm borrowed tens of millions of dollars from Citigroup in 2007 to buy up 11 shopping malls, but Citigroup soon discovered that the firm lied about where the mortgage payments were going to, The Daily News reports.

In the criminal complaint against Smith, Stern is listed as a “cooperating witness” who presented himself to Smith and the others as a wealthy, connected developer who could deliver campaign money in exchange for political favors, the News reports.

In addition to Smith and Halloran, Republican County Chairman Jay Savino, Joseph Tabone, Spring Valley Mayor Noramie Jasmin and Deputy Mayor Joseph Desmaret were all arrested Wednesday for their involvement in a scheme to get Smith on the GOP ballot. As a Democrat, Smith needed the support of three Republican county chairmen to run on the Republican party line.

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Police are investigating after a man driving a minivan was shot in the face in Queens early Monday morning, causing him to crash into five parked vehicles.

Cops responded to a 911 call of a vehicle crash at approximately 12:47 a.m. They discovered Carlos Nunez, 37, of Valley Stream, Long Island, was driving a 2004 Toyota Sienna eastbound on Decatur Street near Irving Avenue in Ridgewood when he struck five parked, unoccupied cars. Emergency responders transported him to Brookdale Hospital where it was determined that he had a gunshot wound to his face, cops said. He was pronounced dead on arrival.

No arrests have been made, and the investigation is ongoing.

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A 17-year-old Bronx girl was found dead after cops responded to a call about a dispute inside her home Wednesday afternoon, police said.

Officers responded to the 911 call about the dispute at 452 Effingham Ave. in Castle Hill about 3 p.m. They discovered Khailaysha Bunch unconscious and unresponsive at the home. She was taken to Jacobi Medical Center where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

The medical examiner will determine the cause of death. The investigation is ongoing.

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A 49-year-old woman was found stabbed to death in the Melrose section of the Bronx on Wednesday, police said.

Cops responded to a 911 call about an unconscious person at 696 Courtland Ave. at approximately 2:42 p.m. They discovered the woman with multiple stab wounds to her torso. She was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

The victim’s identity has not yet been released. No arrests have been made, and the investigation is ongoing.

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Police are searching for a suspect who punched a 35-year-old man inside a Manhattan subway station and then ran off with his iPhone early Monday morning, cops said.

The NYPD released a video of the incident that occurred inside the Times Square-42nd Street subway station about 12:02 a.m. The suspect is seen talking to the victim near the turnstiles, looking around in multiple directions and then punching the victim to the ground.

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  VIDEO: Straphanger punched to the ground for cell phone

The suspect then stole the man’s iPhone and headed toward the northbound 1 train platform, police said.

He is described as a black male, approximately 30 years old and 6 feet 3 inches tall. He was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and black or dark gray pants.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.

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A 29-year-old man was shot to death in his own home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn early Sunday morning, police said.

Jonathan Emanus, 29, was shot numerous times inside 202 Pulaski St. just before 2:30 a.m. Sunday. He was taken to Woodhull Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

No arrests have been made. The investigation is ongoing.

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A 35-year-old man was found dead inside a Queens home after firefighters extinguished a one-alarm fire at the location Sunday morning, cops said.

Police and firefighters responded to the fire at 119-30 146th St. in South Jamaica about 9:36 a.m. They discovered the burned body in the basement. The man, who has been identified as James Minor of Poughkeepsie, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The medical examiner will determine the cause of death. The investigation is ongoing.

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UPDATE: Police said Friday that the suspect was struck one time in the right hand, not in the left hand and buttock as they reported earlier.

Cops said they arrested Shaquille Reid, 20, and charged him with criminal possession of a weapon and menacing.

Metro’s original story is below:

A 20-year-old man was shot by two plainclothes police officers in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn on Thursday evening after he fired at them, cops said.

A police detective and officer from Brooklyn South Narcotics were performing a buy-and-bust operation near 298 Grafton St. around 6 p.m. when they saw the suspect pull out a gun. The officers got out of an unmarked car and began to approach the suspect, who then began firing his Colt .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun at them.

Civilian witnesses heard the cops say “stop” and “get down,” according to the NYPD.

The officers returned fire, striking the suspect in the left hand and buttock, according to police. The suspect was taken to Brookdale Hospital and is in stable condition. Charges against him are pending and the investigation is ongoing.

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The mother of the teen shot to death by two police officers this month is demanding an independent investigation into the shooting.

Carol Gray, mother of 16-year-old Kimani Gray, said Wednesday evening that she and her family are not pleased with the investigation and want an independent probe, The Daily News reported.

Kimani was shot by cops after he pointed a .38 caliber revolver at them, according to police reports. But Gray’s family and friends do not believe the teen had a gun.

Gray and her lawyer were joined by City Councilman Charles Barron outside the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office Wednesday evening.

No witnesses saw Kimani with a gun, Barron said. The councilman demanded the officers be indicted and convicted. The cops involved in the shooting had been sued in the past for civil rights violations.

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A 48-year-old woman was found shot dead inside a Brooklyn apartment building Wednesday afternoon, police said.

Maryanne Rinato was found at 6713 19th Ave. in Bensonhurst just before 3 p.m. She had a gunshot wound to her head, cops said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.

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Police are investigating after they discovered a man’s body along the East River on Wednesday.

Cops responded to a call about a body at approximately 4:45 p.m. at 93rd Street and the East River, police said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police did not specify if the man was found in the water or alongside the river. The investigation is ongoing and the Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death.

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Police are investigating after a pedestrian was struck and killed by an MTA bus Thursday evening in the Oakland Gardens neighborhood of Queens.

The victim, 55, was hit near the intersection of 73rd Avenue and Springfield Boulevard at around 7:30 p.m, police said. The QM3 bus was traveling west on 73rd Avenue and making a left-hand turn onto Springfield Boulevard when the rear end of the bus struck the victim. She was taken to Long Island Jewish Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

The victim’s identity has not been released and the investigation is ongoing.

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Police are searching for the occupants of three separate vehicles spotted near the location where cops discovered two dead bodies in a fire in Howard Beach early Wednesday.

Upon putting out a fire in a grassy area near 159th Avenue and 78th Street, responders discovered the burned bodies of Rudy Superville, 22, and Gary Lopez, 25, both of Brooklyn.

The individuals inside a two-toned dark-colored custom van, a light-colored sedan and a dark-colored sedan are being sought for questioning in the investigation. Images of the vehicles were obtained near 157th Avenue and 83rd Street.

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Police are searching for three men who robbed an elderly man at gunpoint in Queens this past weekend.

The suspects entered a commercial location near the corner of 24th Street and 35th Avenue in Astoria at approximately 1:15 p.m. on Saturday carrying cardboard boxes, police said. Once they were let inside, one of the robbers displayed a firearm and the suspects demanded money from the 78-year-old victim. The victim complied and the men fled with an unknown amount of money.

Two of the suspects are described as black males in the 20s. The suspect who held the gun is described as a Hispanic male in his 20s. They were all wearing a hoodie and a jacket.

Anyone with information should call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.

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(Metro File Photo)

Police are investigating after a man was stabbed and killed yesterday in the Richmond Hill section of Queens.

The victim, an unidentified male in his 30s, was stabbed in the back around 3 p.m. on Wednesday outside of 126-19 Jamaica Ave., police said. Another man, 17, was hit in the shoulder with a rock. The first victim was taken to Jamaica Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The second victim refused medical attention.

Police said they believe the men were walking in front of the location when a group of men attacked them. No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.

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Police are investigating after two burned bodies were discovered as responders put out a brush fire in Queens.

Two adults were found around 4:30 a.m. Wednesday in a grassy area off the Belt Parkway in Howard Beach, police said today.

According to police, officials responded to a 911 call near 159th Avenue and 78th Street, where they discovered a brush fire in an undeveloped grassy area.

In the grass, they found the bodies of two black men, cops said.

The medical examiner is determining the cause of death.

Police are investigating

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Police are investigating the death of a man, 25, whose body was found in the Hudson River near West 79th Street on Monday.

Police responded to a 9-1-1 call about an unconscious person in the water around 4 p.m. Members of the NYPD Harbor Unit removed the body, and the man was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

The Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death. Police have not yet released the man’s identity.

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