Author: metanet

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By Bill Parry

TimesLedger Newspapers

ELMHURST — Police responding to a 911 call of an unconscious man in Elmhurst Tuesday morning discovered a 25-year-old man inside a dwelling on 80th Street near 45th Avenue unconscious and unresponsive with multiple stab wounds to the torso, police said. EMS arrived and pronounced the man dead at the scene, according to the NYPD.

The victim was identified as David Alejandro Gonzalez, a resident of 80th Street near Baxter Avenue in Elmhurst, police said.

There are no arrests and the investigation is ongoing.

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By Gina Martinez

TimesLedger Newspapers

State Assemblymen Ron Kim (D-Flushing) and Edward Braunstein (D-Bayside) met with city Department of Education officials Monday to discuss the expansion of the Korean Dual Language program in New York schools.

The assemblymen, whose districts have heavy Korean populations, said it was important to include Korean in these language programs, which are mostly limited to Chinese and Spanish. There is currently only one Korean Dual Language Program available in all of New York City at Flushing’s PS 32 and it ends after fifth grade, right before many students begin regular foreign language studies in junior high school.

In the meeting with DOE officials, Kim and Braunstein asked that they consider the growing Korean population in New York, particularly in Queens neighborhoods like Flushing, Bayside, and Whitestone. The lawmakers contended that the growth of the Korean community has created an increased demand for such dual language programs.

Also at the meeting were members from the Korean American Association of Greater New York, language education specialist Dr. Yung Duk Kim and Bright Limm, president of the Korean Americans for Political Advancement.

The community leaders urged DOE to work with the Assembly members in developing the program beyond primary school.

Kim, who is the only Korean-American elected official in New York, said studies have shown how valuable a bilingual education is for the development of young minds and limiting the language options could potentially prevent otherwise interested parents from enrolling their children in dual language programs.

“As a Korean-American whose two daughters will likely grow up speaking English, Korean and Chinese, the importance of this kind of education is clear to me,” Kim said. “The current program at PS 32 is a good start, but remains limited. It’s the only Korean dual language program in the whole city and ends after elementary school. By the time its participants graduate from high school, many may already forget what they learned. They should be offered a chance to continue their bilingual education, and their peers who live in other similar school districts should have an equal opportunity to enroll in these valuable programs.”

Braunstein said dual language programs have a proven track record of improving educational outcomes for students. He said many Korean-American families in his district are often surprised and disheartened when they discover Korean is not offered among the list of available programs.

“Our meeting today has given me hope that we can expand the current program to a far greater scope,” he said. “A bilingual education can foster greater intercultural exchange and understanding, helping to bridge gaps between communities while ensuring New York students of all backgrounds can stay connected to their roots and heritage.”

Reach Gina Martinez by e-mail at gmartinez@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4566.

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By Gina Martinez

TimesLedger Newspapers

The Whitestone community has pulled together to help the family of a sick newborn.

Five-month-old Stevie Skaats was born with a rare, debilitating genetic disease that has forced him to spend the last 150 days in the hospital. Parents Ann and Steve, life-long Whitestone residents, were able to bring Stevie home but according to Stevie’s grandmother Maria, the family is now preparing for another trip to the hospital in the upcoming weeks.

A GoFundMe page started in November by Ann’s sister, April Leavy, has already raised $15,000. On the fund-raising page Leavy wrote that the family is thrilled to have Stevie home again but expenses are piling up.

“Along with Stevie came a host of medical equipment for breathing and eating as well as the requirement for in-home care by a registered nurse for 20 hours per day,” she wrote. “Ann had to stop working to keep up with Stevie’s care and coordination of an upcoming medical stay in Canada.”

Leavy asked that family and friends to pitch in to help relieve the family’s financial strain.

“No one will judge how much, how little or even if you are able to donate,” she said on the page. “Donations can even be anonymous if preferred. Everyone has their own issues. I was hoping together we can make Ann, Steve, and Stevie’s a little easier.”

The fund-raising gained traction after Alfred Centola, vice president of the We Love Whitestone civic group, was contacted by Stevie’s grandmother, a former member of the civic association, who asked if he could spread the word.

“We figured we could help by posting their story on the association’s Facebook page and emailing it to people in order to get the word out, especially around the holidays,” Centona said. “So far the response has been good. We’ve gotten a lot of messages and calls.”

Centona said the outpouring of support is not surprising, he added, and said some people have even offered to help the family directly since GoFund Me takes a percentage.

“The Whitestone community as always steps up in these situations,” he said. “The family has been grateful and appreciative and has promised to keep us updated on the progress.”

Reach Gina Martinez by e-mail at gmartinez@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4566.

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By Naeisha Rose

TimesLedger Newspapers

An older woman from Jamaica who suffers from dementia disappeared Monday afternoon, according to the NYPD.

Esther Johnson, 75, went missing from her residence near 171st Street and 107th Avenue and was last seen wearing blue sweatpants, a blue shirt, a gray coat, green and gray sneakers and a tan bandana, authorities said.

Anyone with information about incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).

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.

Reach reporter Naeisha Rose by e-mail at nrose@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4573.

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By Naeisha Rose

TimesLedger Newspapers

Mayor Bill de Blasio held a town meeting at MS 217 in Briarwood last week where he updated the community on issues such as street repaving and a new library. Moderating the event was Councilman Rory Lancman (D- Hillcrest).

The mayor said the city has invested $1.67 billion in a long-term repaving plan, which included fixing 43 lane miles last year and 35 since this summer at Horace Harding, Union Turnpike and Parsons Boulevard.

On Oct. 20 the mayor’s office announced there would be 21 new bus routes throughout the city, five of which would be within Lancman’s district.

The mayor also said the city would be supporting Lancman’s initiative for an outdoor classroom at Willow Lake, which is located at Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

Lancman’s office has already invested almost $2 million in the outdoor classroom and the mayor’s office will add additional funds to ensure the project gets completed.

“We want every park to be great,” said de Blasio. “We are going to add another $800,000 to finish it and get it done.”

Some of the pressing questions from civic leaders involved a library, lighting and quality-of-life crimes.

Rosalie Quinones, the vice president of Friends of Briarwood Library, grilled the mayor about when the construction of the library would begin to meet the needs of the ever-growing population of the area. The time line for the completion of the library is 2020.

“When are we going to have a brand new library built to meet our needs?” Quinones demanded.

Unfortunately, she did not get good news.

“There are challenges as to what it’s going to take,” de Blasio said. “It is on our radar screen and we are trying to come up with a plan.”

Monica Corbett took the mayor to task about lighting at Pomonok Houses, the large public housing development. Scaffolding was recently removed from the area after window replacement finished and was a source of lighting at the NYCHA site, according to the Pomonok Resident Association president. The lack of lighting in the project has been an issue for a while.

“We have been asking you for new windows at Pomonok since you were public advocate,” Corbett said. “You are now the mayor the second term in. We need lights!”

“When you walk down the street, it is like a black hole,” she added.

The general manager of NYCHA said that seven lights were out and the city was in the process of replacing them next week. But that wasn’t good enough for Corbett, who said of the 660 outdoor fixtures there, a majority of them do not work.

The mayor decided to send the general manager to Pomonok to take a tour with Corbett and requested a budget if necessary to address any further problems that might arise on his visit.

Another inquiry made to the mayor was about the recent crimes made in the business improvement districts within Lancman’s district, which covers parts of Jamaica.

According to an executive committee BID member, there have been burglaries, robberies, grand larcenies, and car thefts in the area, which have been driving away foot traffic for business owners and he does not understand what the 60 neighborhood community officers in the area were doing.

The mayor was quick to correct the committee member that there are only 35 non-commissioned officers in the section where the crimes were taking place, but admitted while overall crime has dropped throughout the city, some areas were going to need more resources.

The inspector for the 103rd Precinct said he approved 10 cameras to be spread near the business of the district, and he would continue to monitor the situation.

The mayor said if necessary he would redirect more officers to area that need more resources.

Reach reporter Naeisha Rose by e-mail at nrose@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4573.

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By Naeisha Rose

TimesLedger Newspapers

An aspiring actress and model from Hollis who went to the West Indian island of Jamaica to make a documentary and visit family was found dead Nov. 26, according to loopjamaica.com, a Caribbean breaking news website.

Desiree Gibbon, 26, was found on a road in the bushes of the rural town of Anchovy in the St. James parish section of the island beaten and with her throat slashed, according to investigators.

She attended Cardozo High School in Bayside and St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, according to social media posts.

Gibbon arrived on the island Oct. 20 and was given a three-month stay while living at her grandmother and uncle’s hotel in the resort town of Montego Bay. She was expected to fly back home to Queens Nov. 30, according to authorities on the island.

Family members said a friend offered her a job at a record label, which was bringing her back to New York.

The model was one of 12 people murdered over the weekend in St. James, according to Jamaican news site Western Mirror.

The Anchovy Police reported that a passerby stumbled across the blood-soaked Gibbon around 9:15 a.m. along Long Hill road.

Gibbon’s uncle was the one to identify the young woman from a photo the police had, according to investigators on the island.

A GoFundMe page was set up to help bring Gibbon back to the United States and pay for funeral expenses, according to the website. Within two days nearly 500 people raised $25,486 out of the $30,000 goal set by Gibbon’s aunt and uncle as of Dec. 1. The original benchmark was surpassed and 671 people raised $33,836 by Dec. 6. An additional $10,000 was added to the goal as reward money to help catch the killer, according to Gibbon’s aunt Peggy Brunner.

Friends of Gibbon said she was a fun-loving person with a great personality. She was a graduate of West Virginia University, where she obtained a degree in broadcast journalism.

The model competed as in a beauty pageant for Miss New York in 2014 and was a spokeswoman for the anti-tobacco Truth campaign.

“Everyone at Truth Initiative is saddened by the tragic events in Jamaica that claimed the life of our former colleague Desiree Gibbon,” said a spokeswoman for the Truth Initiative. “Through her work as a truth rider, we knew her as a valued friend and co-worker and she will be sorely missed. Our condolences go out to her family during what must be a very difficult time.”

Her parents left the morning of Dec. 1 to go to Jamaica to retrieve her body, but an autopsy was not scheduled to be performed until this week. They would still have to wait and receive a death certificate before Gibbon is brought home, according to her grieving mother, Andrea Cali-Gibbon.

Authorities in Jamaica have no motives for the murder and have made no arrests.

Authorities had notified Cali-Gibbon her daughter fought off her attacker and her mother hopes DNA evidence from the autopsy will help to catch the killer.

Reach reporter Naeisha Rose by e-mail at nrose@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4573.

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By Bill Parry

TimesLedger Newspapers

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed off on legislation last week that gives the city a green light to build a new state-of-the-art pre-K center at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadow Corona Park. The pre-K Center, near the intersection of 111th Street and 46th Avenue, will be dedicated to science, technology, engineering, art and math.

“This project will provide over 300 seats, helping move our 4-year-olds out of trailers and into a new, state-of-the-art pre-K Center,” City Hall spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein said. “We’re so excited to get started.”

The pre-K center will create a partnership between the city’s Department of Education and the New York Hall of Science on programming and students will be frequent visitors to the museum, using it as a learning lab. The center will be built upon a parking lot adjacent to the Hall of Science on what is public parkland.

In April, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz urged the city to seek the necessary approval from the state Legislature pursuant to the Public Trust Doctrine, which establishes that parks and other natural resources should be preserved for public enjoyment and that alienation of parkland must be authorized by the Albany body. State Sen. Jose Peralta (D-East Elmhurst) and state Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry (D-Corona) drafted the legislation in June that Cuomo signed into law Nov. 30.

“The city received the necessary legal approval from the state Legislature to utilize the public parkland in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which currently houses the New York Hall of Science due to a similar alienation granted decades ago,” Katz said. “Proceeding otherwise would have set a dangerous precedent. The use of public parkland must go through proper channels, even by the city of New York. The action effectively creates hundreds of new pre-K seats with STEM curriculum, and it was critical to follow the proper procedure of the public trust doctrine in the interest of protecting public parkland from unfettered development.”

Peralta applauded Cuomo for signing his bill into law, which will help alleviate the chronic school overcrowding that has plagued his district for decades. The facility’s 306 seats eliminates nearly 60 percent of the neighborhood needs.

“It is unthinkable that in 2017 New York City children are learning in classrooms trailers, and this is why the construction of a state-of-the-art pre-K school next to the Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows Corona Park will benefit the community,” Peralta said. “We are talking about the use of one acre of parkland, which is currently a parking lot. More than 300 new seats in a space that is used for cars will now be available for children from Corona, which is one of the most overcrowded areas in the entire city of New York.”

Construction is expected to be completed in 2020. The city will allocate $20 million for park-related improvements and it will come up with an acre of parkland in return taking for the parcel next to the New York Hall of Science.

Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparry@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4538.

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By Dusica Sue Malesevic

TimesLedger Newspapers

Police have identified the suspect in an early Monday morning explosion that shook commuters at one of the city’s busiest transit hubs.

Akayed Ullah, 27, is in custody for allegedly detonating a “low-tech” pipe bomb at around 7:20 a.m. near the Port Authority Bus Terminal, James O’Neill, NYPD police commissioner, said at a press briefing held just after 9:30 a.m.

The device went off “in a below ground walkway, IND line and 42nd St. & Eighth Ave., [which] connects the Port Authority bus terminal to the NYC IRT 42nd and Seventh Avenue Shuttle at Times Square,” O’Neill noted.

Three people had minor injuries, Dan Nigro, FDNY commissioner, said, with the suspect, Ullah, sustaining serious injuries and taken to Bellevue Hospital. When Ullah allegedly detonated the device, it caused burns to his hands and abdomen, Nigro said.

O’Neill said the device was strapped to Ullah’s body with Velcro and zip ties, and in transit video, he is seen walking down a corridor, O’Neill also noted. The suspect did make statements concerning ISIS, but O’Neill would not elaborate about ties to the group or motivation.

Mayor Bill de Blasio called it an “attempted terrorist attack.”

“Let’s be clear, as New Yorkers, our lives revolve around the subways,” he said. “When we hear of an attack on the subway, it’s incredibly unsettling.”

Ullah, originally from Bangladesh, has lived here for seven years, and resided in Midwood, Brooklyn, according to PIX11.com. Authorities were searching his home, The New York Times reported.

Commuters fled after the device detonated, The Times reported. The MTA responded quickly, and “immediately shut down” the A, C, and E lines, Joe Lhota, the MTA chairman, said. The 1, 2, 3, N, Q, R, W, and 7 trains were skipping Times Square-42nd St. in both directions, but now have resumed making the station stop with delays. The A, C, and E are still bypassing 42nd St.-Port Authority Bus Terminal. At the time of the press briefing, Lhota said all trains should be back to normal by evening rush hour.

De Blasio said there would be an expanded NYPD presence today and police are working to secure all major transit hubs.

“This is most resilient place on Earth, we’ve proven it time and time again,” de Blasio said. “We’ve proved it just over a month ago. We proved it on 9/11. We are going to prove it again today. The terrorists will not win, we are going keep being New Yorkers.”

John Mudd, president of the Midtown South Community Council, has lived at W. 38th St. and Eighth Ave. for more than 30 years.

“It certainly shakes everyone up,” Mudd said by phone. “I’m walking down the street and I’m getting all choked up.”

This attack comes on the heel of a terrorist attack in Lower Manhattan on Oct. 31 that left eight killed and 11 injured.

Information about the suspect or today’s incident should be shared via the terror hotline: 888-NYC-SAFE.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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By Mark Hallum

TimesLedger Newspapers

Subway service was nearly back to normal after an explosion in the Port Authority Bus Terminal caused up to 11 trains to skip the 42nd Street stop near 8th Avenue as an investigation into the incident took place beginning at around 7:20 a.m. Monday morning.

Authorities said three people were injured in what appeared to have been a pipe bomb attack. A suspect, who was among those injured, has been taken into custody.

“There are no known additional incidents or activities… You will see additional NYPD presence throughout the city,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

Jackson Heights was without E train service as it was rerouted along the F line between 36th Street in Queens and West 4th in Manhattan, while the No. 7 N, Q, R and W trains all skipped the station closest to where the drama unfolded, Times Square – 42nd Street.

By about 10 a.m., the bus terminal had reopened and most train service returned to normal.

The No. 7 was still currently skipping Times Square – 42nd Street, according to the NYC Transit.

“This is NYC, we don’t live in fear. But if you see something suspicious you have an obligation to come forward and tell us,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said.

According to O’Neill, the incident happened in the heavily used pedestrian tunnel connecting the bus terminal to the 42nd Street – Times Square subway station.

In a statement, O’Neill said the 27-year-old suspect was found in critical condition wearing an improvised explosive device and was taken into custody and held at Bellevue Medical Center.

The suspect, known as Akayed Ullah, is currently being investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force as surveillance footage is underway as well as an interview of a witness, according to police.

Reach reporter Mark Hallum by e-mail at mhallum@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4564.

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By Naeisha Rose

TimesLedger Newspapers

A man was stabbed to death Sunday night in St. Albans, police said.

After receiving a 911 call around 10:47 p.m., police arrived at 188-30 Jordan Ave. and discovered a 29-year-old man with stab wounds to his left forearm, right hand and left leg, according to authorities.

EMS later arrived at the scene and brought the victim to Queens General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The investigation was ongoing and police were waiting to notify the victim’s family before releasing the identity of the deceased.

Reach reporter Naeisha Rose by e-mail at nrose@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4573.

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