Volume 16 • Issue 34 | January 23 – 29, 2004
Police blotter
Bus war killing
A shootout at the corner of Division and Market Sts. on Sat. Jan. 17, which police say appears to have stemmed from rivalry among Chinatown discount intercity bus operators, ended with one man dead and another injured in a hail of assault rifle and handgun bullets.
The dead victim, 30, whom police would still not identify on Thurs., Jan. 22, was taken to NYU Downtown Hospital after the 10:45 p.m. shooting outside a restaurant. He was pronounced dead an hour later.
Another victim, Chauan-Min Zhang, 27, was shot twice in the back and was driven by his girlfriend to the Fifth Precinct on Elizabeth St. and then taken to Bellevue where he was said to be in stable condition. Police said Zhang was not cooperating with the investigation and his girlfriend was reported to be a ticket agent for one of the discount “Dragon” buses.
Police found a 38 caliber handgun, and 45 shell casings, 34 of them from an AK-47 assault rifle, five from a 38 caliber gun and six from a 45 caliber gun. Police said that at least two gunmen were waiting for the victim but they did not know if Zhang was with the victim or was an assailant who was shot when the victim returned fire.
Last May, De Jian Chen, financial officer of Dragon Coach, was shot to death on Forsythe St. In November, Zhen Ji Li, 31, owner of New Century Travel, another bus company, was stabbed to death and his partner, Lei Chen, was charged in the murder.
Brooklyn Bridge rescue
Three off-duty police officers driving to work on Monday morning Jan. 19 stopped a distraught woman from jumping off the Manhattan ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge, police said.
Officer Rafael Martinez, assigned to Police Plaza security, spotted the woman walking on the roadway at about 7 a.m., got out of his car and tried to engage her in conversation but she disregarded him and climbed over a railing, police said. Two other cops, Michael Bazerman, assigned to the City Hall detail and Det. Angel Serrano, arrived and with Martinez began talking to the woman. After 15 minutes, Martinez and Bazerman were able to grab her while Serrano held onto them to prevent them from going over. The woman was described as a singer, 31, who was having trouble with her career and her boyfriend.
Possible Gray sighting
Spalding Gray, 62, the performer and writer, missing from his home on Wooster St. near Canal St. on Saturday night Jan. 10, was reported seen in a diner in Orange County after he was reported missing, but has not been found.
Severely depressed since June 2001 when he suffered head injuries in an auto accident in Ireland, Gray made two suicide attempts in 2002 near his other home in the Hamptons.
Sarah Vass, a friend who is helping Gray’s wife, Kathy Russo, to find the performer, said on Jan. 21 that the disappearance remained a worry to his wife and the couple’s two young sons.
Gray had been reported seen on the Staten Island ferry the day before his disappearance, a report that worried friends and family because his two suicide attempts were involved with water. The subsequent report from a retired police detective in Orange County “gives us some hope that he didn’t go off the ferry,” said Vass.
On the day he disappeared, Gray was wearing a gray jacket with a blue scarf, brown sweater, black corduroy trousers and brown shoes.
9/11 fraud trial
Jury selection began in Criminal Court on Jan. 22 in the grand larceny and fraud against Beatrice Kaufman, 60, charged with illegally collecting more than $115,000 from insurance companies, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and two charities, Safe Horizons and the Red Cross, in connection with the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001
Kaufman, owner of Bon Temps, an employment agency for legal support staff, was indicted in November 2002 for taking money illegally from FEMA and insurance companies and was indicted in February 2003 for defrauding the two charities.
—Albert Amateau
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