Survives bridge leap
Police responded to a call just before 7 a.m. Sat., Dec. 19 that a distraught young woman was threatening to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge near the Manhattan side. When Fifth Precinct police arrived they saw the victim, identified only as an Asian woman, 22, in the river. Witnesses said she had jumped off the north side of the bridge. An N.Y.P.D. helicopter was dispatched and two Scuba divers went into the water from the helicopter, police said. The divers found the victim and brought her to a nearby F.D.N.Y. boat. The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital where she was listed in stable condition.
Hand bitten
Albert Danielson, 44, pleaded guilty on Dec. 18 and was sentenced to six months in jail for a Mon., Dec. 14 assault and robbery for stealing a bottle of liquor from a store at 9 Broadway near Bowling Green. Danielson put the bottle in his jacket shortly after 8 p.m. and attempted to leave without paying for it, police said. A store employee who observed the theft stopped Danielson. During the confrontation, Danielson bit the employee on the wrist, “causing redness and substantial pain,” the charge says.
Ear bite
A thief who entered a fourth floor chiropractor’s office from the elevator at One Maiden La. around 12:35 p.m. Tues., Dec. 22 took a wallet from the reception desk but dropped it when the receptionist and a male employee of the office grappled with him, police said. The thief, described as a skinny 6-ft. black man with a goatee and a white towel hanging from his back pocket, bit the employee on his left ear and fled.
Fake parking lot
A Brooklyn man who had been arrested on Sept. 13 for tricking a woman driver into leaving her car in a closed parking lot at the corner of Front St. and Maiden La. on July 19 and stealing the vehicle, was charged again on Fri., Dec. 18 for running similar scams on Sept. 6 and Sept. 20, and stealing money from motorists lured into leaving their cars at a Department of Transportation garage on South St. near Old Slip.
Steven Pappas, 48, was charged with two counts of burglary and criminal impersonation relating to the Sept. 6 and Sept. 20 incidents, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
“Commandeering a city garage for a park-to-pay scam is one of the more brazen charged frauds we’ve seen,” said Investigations Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn regarding the September incidents.
Pappas was identified as the suspect from a soda can he left at the South St. garage on Sept. 20, according to court papers. Traces of his D.N.A. left on the can were matched to his D.N.A. in a police data bank, according to the complaint. Pappas is a registered sex offender, according to the D.A. He was convicted of first degree sexual abuse in March 2000, according to the New York Times.
Pappas’ arrest, along with a 16-year-old boy, for the July 19 park-to-pay scam on Front St. was reported in Downtown Express on Sept. 18, 2009. That case is still pending. Pappas had been paroled after his Sept. 13 arrest for the July offense.
Cell phone snatch
A Queens woman, 33, told police she was talking on her BlackBerry phone on the north side of Spring St. between Sixth Ave. and Varick St. around 1 p.m. Tues., Dec. 22 when a man in his 20s rode by on a bicycle, snatched the phone from her hand and rode off east toward Sixth Ave.
S. William St. burglary
A burglar broke into the De Janeiro clothing boutique at 27 S. William St. through a basement door sometime between 7 p.m. Mon., Dec. 21 and Tuesday morning and took $200 from the main cash register, police said.
Yoga studio theft
A Financial District resident told police on Dec. 22 that someone had taken her cell phone from her jacket left in the locker area of a yoga studio at 121 Fulton St. on Nov. 14 while she was taking a class. She said she reported the theft a month later because her insurance carrier required a police record of the theft.
— Albert Amateau
