UPDATE: Cops are looking into a beating in the East Village last night that might be another hate-motivated attack.

The information at this time is limited, but a law enforcement source reported that both the victim and the suspect are residents in a homeless shelter in the East Village. The two reportedly were out for drinks and pizza together, and on the walk back to the shelter talked about the victim being gay. 

The victim reportedly told police that outside the shelter, the suspect mumbled anti-gay slurs and beat him up. The victim told police he was knocked unconscious and treated at a hospital.

The Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.

Yesterday, before a vigil and march in the West Village against hate crimes, it was announced that police presence will be increased in the areas in Manhattan that have seen a spate of hate crimes over the last few weeks.

While the total number of bias incidents in down by about 29 percent from last year, anti-gay attacks have nearly doubled, according to police data. There have so far been at least 25 anti-gay incidents, including this SoHo attack, compared to 14 anti-gay incidents by this time last year.

Metro’s original story is below.

Early Tuesday morning, another hate crime occurred in downtown Manhattan, just days after a man was shot in the head by another man shouting homophobic slurs in the West Village.

Two men were walking up Broadway in SoHo at 5:20 a.m. when two other men started shouting anti-gay slurs at them, police said.

They were reportedly shouting “pato” and “maricon,” Spanish slurs used against black and gay people. They also reportedly called them, in English, “f—ing faggots.”

The shouting developed into a physical confrontation, and the two aggressors punched one of the victims repeatedly in the face, causing swelling and cuts around his right eye.

Police arrested two suspects in the area shortly after. The suspects, Fabian Ortiz, 32, and Pedro Jimenez, 23, are being charged with assault as a hate crime, which is a felony.

While the total number of bias incidents in down by about 29 percent from last year, anti-gay attacks have nearly doubled. There have so far been at least 25 anti-gay incidents, including this SoHo attack, compared to 14 anti-gay incidents by this time last year.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post Another hate crime in Manhattan: two arrested in SoHo assault appeared first on Metro.us.

If you drew a map of Manhattan, what would your landmarks be?

For one man, a smattering of dots marked six wives and three lovers. Notably, the third, fifth and sixth wives were plotted about a block apart.

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  Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps

Another map-maker left his map nearly blank, but for a small “x” in the southeast corner of Central Park with the note: “met my wife.”

A third cartographer noted at the tip-top end of Manhattan: “ruined a kickball game by kicking ball into Hudson.” Slightly further south is the note: “FIRST CRUSH I was 27.”

These maps, and 72 others, are part of a collection by Becky Cooper, titled “Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers,” out of a public art project Cooper started in 2009.

She handmade hundreds of blank maps using a letterpress at school, and initially hid 300 of them around the city, in the Waldorf and the backseats of taxis, hoping people would stumble across them. She printed her P.O. box number on the back, expecting people would fill them out and send them back to her.

But she said that none came back, until she had a conversation with a boutique owner downtown who caught her trying to stash a map in the store. Cooper explained the project and a week later received a map in the mail that she knew was from that woman.

“The conversation had invested her enough in the project to return the map,” Cooper said. After that, she and her roommate walked the length of Manhattan, from Marble Hill to Battery Park, with a shoebox of maps, and handed them out to strangers.

A contribution from New Yorker staff writer Patricia Marx, a twenty-year Manhattan resident who is apparently “still annoyed with Broadway for running on a diagonal.” Credit: Becky Cooper.

Her book chronicles that walk, recounting little stories about the people she encountered. The text of the book is, in fact, her own map of Manhattan.

When she first considered producing a collection of the maps, she spread them all out on the floor and tried to group them into categories. A lot of people used to maps to chronicle numerous lovers, and it was then that it occurred to her that the maps were little love stories.

She noted the lost or haunted feeling that can come after a breakup, the disorienting feeling of traveling through a city pockmarked with memories.

“You feel like you’re in a ghost town,” Cooper said.

Cooper recounted the words of a friend after the end of a five-year relationship: “She’s never lived in New York without being with him. She was like, ‘My whole map of the city is skewed. I don’t know the city without him.’”

Cooper hesitated when asked if she has a favorite map.

“I feel like it’s like picking your favorite child,” she said. “I definitely have maps whose circumstances I remember more than others.”

She said the second-to-last map in the book, which portrays a four-decade-long relationship with a late wife, broke her heart when she received it.

“There isn’t an overwhelming amount of emotion that would allow you to distance yourself from it, but you can feel his loss.”

One of the most memorable maps for Cooper, which she calls “Eve.” Credit: Becky Cooper.

That sender had put his own return address label on the map, so she searched his name online and discovered the eulogy he wrote for her in a local paper.

“He said, ‘She was the most wonderful person I’ve ever known,’” Cooper recalled. “I just lost it.”

Cooper had the chance to meet that mapmaker at a reading recently when he approached her to express his gratitude at seeing his map in her collection.

“I knew his name because I love his map so much,” she said.

He told her that making it had helped him to remember things about his wife as he was trying to cope with losing her.

“He thanked me for allowing him to capture that particular Manhattan,” Cooper said.

Cooper is still collecting maps. Blank ones can be accessed here, or found on the cover of Tuesday’s Metro New York. She will be giving a talk and signing books at BookCourt in Brooklyn on Thursday, June 6 at 7 p.m.

“Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers”

Book Talk and Signing with Becky Cooper

Thursday June 6

7 p.m.

BookCourt 164 Court Street, Brooklyn

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post Handmade maps describe a city of loves and losses appeared first on Metro.us.

Following the murder of a 32-year-old man on Friday night in Manhattan, local officials and gay rights groups will rally Monday night to demand an end to hate crimes.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other elected officials will join LGBT groups and other community members to march to the site of Friday’s shooting and denounce hate violence.

Marc Carson, 32, was shot and killed in the West Village at about midnight on Friday. The suspected gunman, 33-year-old Elliott Morales, allegedly shouted anti-gay slurs at Carson before pulling out a gun and shooting him in the face near the corner of West Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue.

Friday’s shooting follows a recent uptick in anti-gay hate crimes in the city. Two men were attacked by a group of men who hurled anti-gay remarks at them near Madison Square Garden earlier this month.

A march will begin Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the LGBT Center located at 208 W. 13th St. and end at the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. A rally will follow at 6 p.m.

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President Barack Obama will stop in Midtown Manhattan this afternoon, which might mean traffic headaches.

The president, who met with British Prime Minister David Cameron this morning at the White House, will reportedly speak at three fundraisers.

One stop will include the Waldorf Astoria for a Democratic event.

The president’s entourage might signal traffic problems for the afternoon while he is here — his visit is estimated to last from about 3 p.m. until 10 p.m., according to the Daily News.

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A 23-year-old woman was found dead in Union Square, according to a news report.

The New York Post reports that a New Jersey woman, Kayla Mitchell, was found dead Thursday morning.

The newspaper reports that Mitchell had a dog, Buster, and a friend called her “terrific.”

Cops are investigating the cause of death, specifically whether drugs were involved, according to the Post.

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Police have released a video of eight men they are looking to speak with about a possible bias attack Sunday evening that left one man with a broken nose and another with a bruised hand. 

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  Eight sought in Midtown bias attack

A group of men approached two men in front of a McDonald’s on Eighth Avenue near Madison Square Garden at around 6:45 p.m. and shouted anti-gay remarks at them, cops said. The suspects then pushed the victims to the ground and punched one of them in the face.

Police released a photo of one of the suspects Tuesday. They released a new video Wednesday showing the same suspect walking with seven other men. Detectives are looking to speak with the men in the video regarding the incident. 

Anyone with information in regard 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 or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577.

The post VIDEO: Cops seek eight men in Midtown bias attack appeared first on Metro.us.

A man from Albany has been arrested in connection with the groping of a 9-year-old girl in the East Village last month.

Rene Otero, 52, allegedly approached the victim on the afternoon of April 14 and grabbed her buttocks, cops said. Police had released a surveillance photo of the suspect taken in front of 465 E. 10th St. shortly before the incident.

He has been charged with sex abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

The post Upstate man arrested in East Village groping of child appeared first on Metro.us.

The post Jane’s Walks appeared first on Metro.us.

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

Those were the words of Jane Jacobs, the visionary urban planning activist who once wrote a treatise declaring “Downtown is for People.”

Jacobs went to bat against former Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, chairing a committee to stop Moses’ plan to build an expressway through Washington Square Park and the West Village.

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  Jane’s Walks

Jacobs’ legacy continues to resonate with New Yorkers today: in the comments section of a new YouTube video by anti-Spectra-Pipeline group Occupy the Pipeline, one commenter notes that the intended West Village gas pipeline will run alongside a toddler playground in Hudson River Park and laments, “What would Jane Jacobs do?”

This Saturday would have been Jacobs’ 97th birthday, and New Yorkers are invited to take to her beloved city streets for the Municipal Arts Society’s annual Jane’s Walks.

MAS is offering 100 free walks and bike rides that will allow community residents to explore their neighborhoods and examine and discuss what does and doesn’t “work” from every angle: from housing issues to immigrant rights to LGBT experience and more.

After half a lifetime of civic activism in New York City, Jacobs moved her draft-age sons to Toronto in 1968. She continued to be active in civic life there, and the first Jane’s Walk happened in Toronto in 2007, a year after her death in 2006. A group of Jacobs’ friends were looking for a way to memorialize her, and while ideas of a namesake park or street were floated, it was ultimately decided that the most fitting tribute to Jacobs would be “something that involved a lot of people and was active, and particularly that gave people a chance to get out and experience their neighborhood,” explained one of those friends, Mary Rowe.

Rowe, Managing Director at the Municipal Arts Society, noted that while Jacobs split her life between two major cities with a lot in common — New York and Toronto are both major waterfront cities with large immigrant communities, vibrant neighborhoods, and significant financial centers — and loved them both, all of her books are set in New York.

“Even when she was living in Toronto, she still set her books in New York,” Rowe said, noting that the books contained “lots and lots of lively conversation between characters.”

“She said she had to set those in New York because Canadians were too polite,” Rowe quipped.

Rowe marveled at the range of walks planned for this year, and explained an important aspect of the walks is that there is no real “leader”: they’re “hosted” by community residents. Rowe has hosted walks in three different cities, Toronto, New York, and New Orleans, and said that “invariably there are people in the group that point something out that nobody’s heard of.”

On one walk in Toronto, she recalled, they had stopped to discuss a seemingly out of place tree in the neighborhood, only to be approached by a woman nearby who explained that was “her tree”: she had been caring for it for 25 years.

The post Jane’s Walks: explore the city this weekend appeared first on Metro.us.

Election day? Thanksgiving with your in-laws?

Nope — the planned Spectra Pipeline, which will pump fracked gas up the New York shoreline and eventually into the West Village under Gansevoort Street.

A video by the group Occupy the Pipeline warns of the various dangerous posed by the pipeline, noting that it was “approved against the will of the community,” with 5,000 comments filed against it.

The gas will come from the Marcellus Shale, which apparently has exceedingly high concentrations of radon. Radon is the number one cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.

The video calls out the pipeline’s parent company, Spectra, which reportedly has paid out tens of millions of dollars in fines for safety violations including toxic chemical spills, leaks and explosions.

Footage of a pipeline of similar size and pressure in California, which exploded, killing 8 people and burning down 38 homes is followed by the ominous query: ”Can you imagine this happening in the West Village?”

One YouTube commenter pointed out that the pipeline would run alongside a toddler playground in Hudson River Park, and asked, “What would Jane Jacobs do?”

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post VIDEO: Oil pipeline coming to the West Village appeared first on Metro.us.

A 27-year-old man from Long Island has been arrested for allegedly raping a Columbia University student after he drugged her with ecstasy.

Sean Ahearn, of Oakdale, met the 26-year-old woman online, and the two agreed to meet at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Battery Park City around 8 p.m. on April 7, the Daily News reported.

The suspect paid for a room and the two went upstairs. Ahearn allegedly gave the woman a drink spiked with ecstasy and then raped her after she passed out.

He was arrested by police on Saturday and has been charged with rape and sexual abuse.

Results from a rape kit and toxicology tests were pending. Ahearn posted a long message on his Facebook page early Tuesday morning stating that he is innocent.

“Still in shock just going to continue to have faith that everything happens for a reason and everything will work out. Totally blindsided by this. They know in their heart this did not happen, why would it happen what would my motive be? What would I have to gain?” he wrote in the post.

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An armed suspect allegedly robbed a Chipotle in Manhattan last week and got away with $6,000 in cash, police said.

Cops are searching for the man who entered the restaurant at 320 Park Ave. in Midtown just before midnight on April 25. The suspect pulled out a silver handgun and demanded money from the store safe, cops said.

He also allegedly forced one employee to tie up a second employee using zip ties during the robbery. He then fled with the cash.

The suspect is described as being approximately 6-foot or 6-foot-1, between 200 and 225 lbs, wearing black jeans, a black Northface jacket, black hooded sweatshirt and a black winter hat with a white emblem on the front. He was also wearing white gloves with red palms.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (5477). The public can also submit their 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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A Central Park West condo board is not happy with a couple who bragged online about making money off of renting out their apartment on Airbnb.com, DNAinfo reports.

The condo board has gone so far as to bring a suit against the couple in Manhattan Supreme Court accusing Gavin and Jodi Samuels of hosting large Shabbat dinners, cooking classes, and renting out the apartment for over 30 days at a time without board approval.

The board’s lawyers allege that these practices are in violation of the condo’s bylaws .

In January, boardmembers scoured the sites to find the couple had rented out the apartment five times in 2012, usually for under two weeks.

“As usual, we rent out our New York apartment at a premium…it actually pays for us to go away,” Jodi Samuels had on Metroimma, a website for Jewish mothers.

The couple already received a $5,500 fine by the board when they did not heed to a order to stop using the apartment as a bed-and-breakfast.

According to the suit, the couple hosted regular Shabbat cooking class where they charged $15 per person, as well as Shabbat dinners that served around 40 people per meal, at $25 to $30 a head.

The board’s lawyers estimate that adds up to about 1,000 dinner guests per year, and complain of the increased burden that places on the building’s elevators and staff, as well as bothersome foot traffic in the hallways.

The board’s lawyers also reportedly noted that city frowns on subletting apartments through websites like airbnb.com and homeaway.com.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post Upper West Side condo board sues couple for bed-and-breakfast appeared first on Metro.us.

Police have arrested a 13-year-old girl for an attempted robbery in Central Park earlier this week and are searching for young boy who was also involved in the incident.

Two suspects approached a 38-year-old woman near Fifth Avenue and 107th Street around 8 p.m. on Monday, police said. The female suspect demanded the woman’s cell phone, but the woman refused. The male suspect then tried to take the victim’s purse. She was able to hold onto her purse, and the suspects fled.

One suspect was described as a girl between 12 and 14 years old, and the other was described as a boy 10 to 11 years old. Detectives were also looking for a 14-year-old girl who was seen with the suspects immediately following the incident. It is not clear if police arrested the girl who approached the victim or the girl who was seen talking with the suspects after the attempted robbery.

The boy is described as being approximately 4-feet-5 and wearing a beige striped fleece.

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A 38-year-old woman was sexually assaulted and then robbed by two men in the Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan after she asked them for directions, police said.

The victim approached the suspects near Chrystie Street and Grand Street at approximately 9:30 p.m. on April 15, according to police. She asked the two men for directions, and the first suspect walked with her in the direction she needed to go.

The second suspect followed the two, grabbed the woman from behind and pinned her against the wall. The first suspect proceeded to punch her in the ribs and thigh. He then sexually assaulted her before removing her property and fleeing.

Police have released a sketch of the suspect accused of sexually assaulting the victim.

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

The post Woman sexually assaulted, robbed after she asked for directions appeared first on Metro.us.

Cooper Union announced Tuesday that for the first time in more than a century, the school will charge tuition for undergraduate students.

The college, famous for its policy of full-tuition scholarships, made its announcement after more than 18 months of debate on how to deal with its financial troubles.

“The time has come for us to set our institution on a path that will enable it to survive and thrive well into the future,” the announcement reads. “Consequently, the Board of Trustees voted last week to reduce the full-tuition scholarship to 50 percent for all undergraduates admitted to the Cooper Union, beginning with the class entering in the fall of 2014.”

Current undergraduate students, including those entering this fall, will still receive the full-tuition scholarship. Tuition will cost approximately $20,000, but scholarships will still be granted to those who need it.

Burcu Oz, a graduate of the art school, watched the speech on a live feed online.

“It felt like witnessing a life sentence being read at the end of a trial,” Oz said.

Many students are comparing this decision to the administration’s decision several years ago to tear down the old Hewitt building.

Kenny Komer, a New York based artist and Cooper Union graduate who did a project in response to the decision, putting up posters in the window of the building reading “I miss the old NY” noted that the new building cost “something like $200 million.”

“What a slap in the face,” Komer said.

Oz also noted the incremental changes the school has undergone.

“Like politics, things are changed progressively, eased in step-by-step,” she explained. The idea is, without “one major outcry, but a number of smaller ones that are easier to manage… they—almost always—get to where it was they wanted to go.”

Cooper Union opened in 1859 and has been privately funded to maintain the school’s mission to provide quality education that is accessible to everyone.

The school has produced many notable artists, including Milton Glaser, who created the “I love NY” logo.

The announcement was made in the Great Hall at noon on Tuesday, after a campus-wide e-mail notice was sent out around 6 a.m. from Board of Trustees Chairman Mark Epstein. The e-mail noted that a current Cooper ID was needed to gain entry, and requested “no signs or banners please.”

The school administration reportedly told maintenance to drill fourth floor windows locked, where political action banners have been hung in the past.

According to the Free Cooper Union group, maintenance staff was instructed by the school administration to use drills to lock the windows on the fourth floor where political action banners have been hung in the past. Credit: Facebook/Free Cooper Union.

Students orchestrated a schoolwide walk-out at 2 p.m. later that day.

According to a testimonial on the “Free Cooper Union” Facebook page, there were seven NYPD motorycles, two vans, unmarked cars, and several NYPD cars, all “in response to our absolutely peaceful gathering after the announcement.”

Young alumni reactions range from furious to heartbroken.

Komer hailed his alma mater as a place “where individuals from every walk of life can sit in a room together and talk about how they perceive the world and how the world shapes them.”

Komer worries that charging tuition will change or even eliminate that experience.

Another Cooper-educated artist had a different opinion, however.

“My alums would kill me if they heard me say this, but I’m not really against the sliding scale tuition model, as long as it’s coupled with a truly blind admissions process,” said alumnus Boris Rasin, another New York based artist. “The truth is, we already had a form of tuition in the form of dues, which were also on a sliding scale, but totaled about $2,000 a year if I remember correctly.”

Komer acknowledged the sliding scale, but was skeptical of the feasibility of a need-blind application system, and still felt the possibility of any tuition at all could shape the applicant pool.

“To be honest, I doubt I would have gone to art school at all if I had to pay $20,000 to $40,000 a year,” Komer said, and added: ”Maybe I’d be a doctor by now if Cooper wasn’t free.”

Laura Shin contributed reporting to this article.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post Cooper Union to charge tuition for first time appeared first on Metro.us.

A man called 911 around 3:31 p.m. Thursday afternoon and told the operator that there was a bomb on board an N train approaching Times Square.

The caller said the train would arrive in the station in five minutes.

Police deduced the call was made from a pay phone at West 48th Street and 7th Avenue.

They were able to track down a photo of a suspect, who they describe as a white male between the ages of 20 and 30 with blondish hair, carrying a black backpack.

The NYPD urges anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). All calls are confidential.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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An 84-year-old woman died just after midnight Wednesday morning in a fire inside an East Village apartment, cops said.

Police responded to the call about a fire at 115th Fourth Ave. inside apartment 5F. Upon extinguishing the fire, responders found the elderly victim unresponsive with burns to her body. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Officials are investigating the cause of the fire.

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The murder trial of David Tarloff, accused of killing psychologist Kathyrn Faughey on February 12, 2008, was ruled a mistrial today, as the jury informed the presiding judge, Justice Edward McLaughlin, that they were at a deadlock.

Tarloff, who is a diagnosed schizophrenic, attacked the Upper East Side psychologist five years ago in the office she shared with his former psychiatrist, Kent Shinbach, who had not treated him in 17 years.

The jury had previously insisted they were at a deadlock on two separate occasions, and both times McLaughlin directed them to continue deliberating.

On Tuesday, however, McLaughlin announced, “I’m willing to say we’re finished,” the New York Times reported.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has already vowed to retry the case.

If convicted, Tarloff would face up to life in prison. If the insanity defense is accepted, he would be taken to a secure psychiatric facility, possibly for the rest of his life.

The attack

Court-appointed defense attorneys did not challenge that Tarloff killed Faughey, but maintained that he was not mentally well enough on the day of the attack to comprehend that it was wrong.

Tarloff has been in psychiatric care intermittently since 1991.

Evan Krutoy, an attorney at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, said the robbery was meticulously pre-meditated, and that the fact that Tarloff attempted to hide what he had done and escape proved he knew he had done something wrong.

Tarloff intended to rob Shinbach for money to take his mother from a nursing home to Hawaii, where he wanted to care for her himself.

The defense argued that he believed God wanted him to do it.

Tarloff reportedly told police that he was surprised to see Faughey when he arrived at the office.

He beat her in the head with a mallet and stabbed her repeated in the chest with a knife.

When Shinbach went to help Faughey, Tarloff attacked him as well.

Faughey died on her office floor.

Deadlock

After listening to three weeks of testimony at the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the jury was unable to come to a conclusive decision on the insanity defense.

Jurors sent McLaughlin notes on two separate occasions insisting they were deadlocked; the judge ordered them to keep on both times.

The first note, sent last Thursday, was seven days into jury deliberations. The Times reported that yelling could be heard anytime the door to the jury room door opened.

At that time, McLaughlin read the jury an Allen charge: a script directing them to continue deliberating and set aside opinions held for pride or other unsound reasons.

Jurors were reportedly visibly angry; some even rolled their eyes.

McLaughlin expressed empathy over the difficulty of the task.

But, he said, “it was not intended to be any other way.”

Forensic psychologist, lawyer and professor Charles Ewing told the Times he was surprised that cases involving insanity defenses didn’t result in hung juries more often, as the jurors are charged with the challenge of gauging the testimony of conflicting experts.

“A hung jury may simply mean that the jurors could not agree on the morality of punishing someone who is clearly mentally ill, regardless of whether he meets the high legal standard for insanity,” Ewing explained.

The jury had at one point asked to have expert testimony reread, and spent almost a full day hearing expert opinions for a second time.

They had also previously asked McLaughlin to repeat his explanations of the requirements to prove insanity, and of the consequences of hung jury.

One juror had asked to go home on account of “negative attitudes” among the other jurors. She ultimately stayed.

To prove insanity, it is not enough for the defendant to have been under psychiatric care for a lifetime; the jury must be persuaded that Tarloff did not understand that his actions would kill Faughey and that it was wrong to attack her.

The Times pointed out that this defense is used very infrequently: out of 5,910 murder cases in New York state in the past decade, only seven defendants have been found at trial not responsible for reason of mental disease or defect.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

The post With jury deadlocked, Tarloff case declared a mistrial appeared first on Metro.us.

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.

The post Cops seek suspect who groped 9-year-old girl appeared first on Metro.us.

A sobbing stalker reportedly threw an electric razor filled with her own pubic hair at Hugh Jackman while he was working out at Gotham Gym in the West Village, according to a New York Post exclusive report.

The Post described the stalker as blond and wearing khaki pants and a blue hoodie, and identified her as 47-year-old Kathleen Thurston.

Thurston reportedly snuck past the check-in desk while hysterically sobbing, found Jackman and shouted, “I love you!” before reaching into her waistband and lobbing the razor at him.

Jackman reportedly backed away, thinking she was reaching for a knife or a gun.

Thurston was reportedly physically removed from the gym, and arrested at 14th Street and 8th Avenue.

The Post reported that the NYPD Crime Scene Unit had to pick hairs out of the razor to match then to Thurston’s DNA.

Jackman reportedly said he has seen Thurston outside his 7-year-old daughter’s school in Manhattan, and she had previously shown up at his home, but he did not have a restraining order against her.

Thurston has no prior criminal history. The Post said her listed address was a Harlem shelter for the mentally ill.

As of Saturday night, she was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Prosecutors said they busted dozens of Lower East Side cocaine runners, including four kingpins they called major traffickers.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and Police Commisioner Ray Kelly announced the 41 defendants’ indictments today.

The drug rings allegedly sold hundreds of thousands of dollors of cocaine a year, they said. Many of the suspects already had violent histories, from murder to gang assault to unsolved shootings, Kelly added.

Members allegedly used car services to deliver cocaine to customers all over the city, from the Upper East and West Sides to Brooklyn and Queens. They charged about $120 per gram of cocaine, officials said.

Two of the defendants charged are livery drivers.

“Residents of Manhattan today can get nearly everything delivered to their doorstep – from dinner, to dry cleaning and even cocaine,” Vance said.

Prosecutors outlined charges against 33 of the Lower East Side “Blocc Boyz” street gang members, as well as eight in the “Money Boyz” street gang in the East Village.

The alleged gang members spent the cash on liquor, BMWs and a Queens strip club called Perfection, according to court documents.

At the same time as they boasted pictures with wads of cash on Facebook, Vance said, they were living in city-subsidized NYCHA housing.

“Hardworking families should not have to live side by side with drug dealers poisoning their communities,” he said.

In a separate case, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara also announced drug-trafficking arrests today.

He charged 12 people in the Bronx with drug trafficking crack cocaine as well as three murders and a drug-related shooting.

The arrests followed a seven-year investigation where undercover NYPD officers made hundreds of cocaine purchases, officials said.

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A 68-year-old woman was attacked by a man who tried to rob her inside an elevator in an Upper West Side building Monday.

The suspect followed the victim inside 840 Columbus Ave. shortly before 8 a.m. Once they were inside the elevator, the man attempted to grab the woman’s purse and then punched her in the face, cops said. He fled without any property. The woman was treated at St. Luke’s Hospital.

The suspect is described as a black male in his early 20s, approximately 5-foot-7 with a slim build. He was last seen wearing a blue-and-white hooded Polo jacket with the number 3 on the right shoulder. He was also wearing an orange billed baseball cap and white sneakers.

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

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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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63 members of three of Manhattan’s most violent gangs were indicted today, announced Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The rival street gangs, known as Air It Out, True Money Gang, and Whoadey, have battled for control of an area in East Harlem, spanning from 106 Street to 116 Street and 5th Avenue to 3rd Avenue, since at least 2009. They are responsible for at least three murders and more than 30 shootings.

They have also been responsible for numerous assaults and nabbed on possession and trafficking of firearms. They are being charged now with conspiracy in the first degree, which is a Class A felony. Additional charges are for conspiracy in the second, third and fourth degree, assault, criminal possession of a weapon, and attempted gang assault in the first.

The conspiracy charges are based on conspiracies to commit murder in the second degree.

Between October 2009 and March 2013, True Money Gang and Whoadey banded together against Air It Out to protect territory and avenge shootings and murders.

According to the indictments, the gang members used hundreds of Facebook and Twitter posts and direct messages, text messages, cell phone videos, and calls made from Rikers Correctional Facility to plot the deaths of rival gang members.

Social media and prison phone calls apparently were also used to traffic firearms and ammunition, and give warnings about law enforcement.

The indictments come after a three and a half year long investigation led by the DA’s Trial Division and Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit, as well as the NYPD’s Gang Division.

Since the DA established a Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit, there have been 10 indictments charging 11 different gangs.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Rep. Carolyn Maloney received death threats this week because of her support for gun-control legislation, she said Wednesday.

People called the legislator’s New York office with death threats, she said, after she authored a bill that would require gun owners to have insurance.

“The calls were fielded by young interns, who were understandably shaken by this experience,” she said.

Police are investigating the calls, according to Maloney’s office.

Maloney has supported the comprehensive gun reform package proposed by President Barack Obama and wrote two bills, one that would strengthen a law against gun trafficking and another requiring gun owners carry insurance, similar to car owners.

“I am proud of my work to help curb gun violence,” she said. “Given all the acts of gun violence we have seen in the past two years, the shootings in Aurora and Newtown, the attack on my friend and colleague Gabby Gifford, I take the threat of more gun violence very seriously. But it is not something that I will allow to stop me from doing my work.”

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Famed Harlem pizzeria Patsy’s is opening its first outer-borough in Queens, the Daily News reported.

The head chef will be Robert Orrico, who apparently frequented Patsy’s in his childhood.

“I have such high regard for the name and the product,” Orrico said. “It’s such an honor.”

Pains have been taken to make sure the new location can live up to the original: proprietor Frank Brija reportedly “seasons” the new bricks for the Queens oven by letting them soak in the soot and aroma for the 80-year-old stove at the Harlem location.

Brija said they were compelled to move into Queens because of the borough residents frequenting the Harlem landmark.

“The demand was becoming so much from Queens, we had to,” Brija said. “I do have butterflies. It’s a new territory.”

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Donnell Baines, a purported pimp running a prostitution ring in the Upper East Side, was sentenced in Manhattan Supreme Court to 62 years in prison, the NY Post reported.

Baines insisted the women working for him were happy, pointing to the fact that they apparently continued to return to him, despite allegations that he repeated beat and raped them.

“It defies human experience for somebody to [be raped] and not say anything and to keep leaving and coming back,” he argued to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Patricia Nunez.

Nunez apparently called the women’s repeated returns to Baines as “mystifying.”

Baines kept at least four women, including a 16-year-old, in his East 77th Street home, but said he was only operating a Webcam pornography service, according to the Post.

His defense attorney, Anastasios Sarikas reportedly called the sentence “excessive,” and said he believes it will be overturned on appeal.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Police identified the young woman found dead in a Columbia dorm room on Sunday morning as Jessica Fingers, a Columbia student and star athlete.

Fingers was on medical leave from school after having a major stroke, according to her father, Robert Bellamy. Her parents were told by a neurologist that the stroke was caused by birth control.

Her father said she was planning on returning to school in the Fall, though, and was recovering well.

“She was a vibrant, happy person,” Bellamy said. “She was the type of person that you’d want to be around.”

Bellamy said he spoke to his daughter on Saturday, and she was planning on coming home for Easter.

Jessica Fingers, 21, a student and runner at Columbia University was found dead inside a dorm room on Sunday. (Credit: Columbia University Athletics.)

Cause of death may have been overdose

The Medical Examiner reported that Fingers had brain swelling consistent with a Methadone overdose and mixing alcohol and Xanax.

The ME did not find physical trauma or signs of foul play and authorities believe that pending a toxicology report, the death will be ruled an overdose.

Fingers’ father, Robert Bellamy, said that she was “the type of daughter every parent would love to have.”

“She just made a mistake and it killed her,” Bellamy said. “We all make poor choices in our lives, but most of the time we don’t die from them.”

Bellamy confirmed that she died from an overdose, but insisted that she did not use drugs regularly.

“I know that for a fact,” her father said. “This was experimental.”

‘Just an incredible daughter’

Fingers was from Monticello, NY, and received a full scholarship to attend Columbia University. She was apparently recruited by many schools because of her achievements as a runner. In her senior year in high school, she finished second among Section Nine Class A cross-country runners, and sixth statewide, according to area newspaper The River Reporter.

Fingers’ father pointed out that Columbia does not give athletic scholarships, so even though she was already accepting into their track athletics program, their offer was based on her academic merits. Fingers was in the top nine percent of her high school class.

Bellamy said his daughter moved down to the city in the last three months to work in a restaurant. He said the thing she wanted most was to be a chef.

“She was almost a professional,” Bellamy recounted. “The last four or five years all she wanted was professional cooking supplies; she was an amazing pastry chef.”

He said she had just picked up running again as well.

“She was doing some running on her own, going back to competitive running would’ve been a stretch at this point,” he explained. “But it was something she loved, and she was one of the best in the country at it.”

Her father also expressed pride in Fingers academically, saying she was “brilliant and focused.”

“She was the most focused young woman I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “She was hard-working, she made her own money.”

“She was just an incredible daughter,” he added.

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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NASA released an amazing image of New York City that its astronauts captured from outer space.

According to the space agency, a member of Expedition 35 aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of the city’s metropolitan area March 23.

The space station orbits the Earth, and the crew member was able to capture the 400-millimeter image at night.

The photo shows Manhattan glowing nearly completely amber, ringed by New Jersey, Brooklyn and Queens.

As NASA pointed out, Central Park is just to the left of the center of the frame.

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