Robbery pair arrested
Ninth Police Precinct detectives have arrested a teenage girl and a man, both East Village residents, in connection with a series of 10 armed robberies, most at gunpoint and all but two of them in the East Village.
The robberies, which began on Jan. 6 and ended Jan. 30, included stores and pedestrians in the East Village and were reported in the Feb. 11 issue of The Villager.
Detectives arrested the girl first, Digna Pujol, 16, of 108 Avenue D, on Fri. Feb. 6. Ivan Vidal, 32, of 466 E. Sixth St., who was charged in all the cases with wielding a gun or a knife, was apprehended on Sat. Feb. 14. Both were charged with first-degree robbery.
A store at 156 Second Ave. near E. 10th St. was victimized twice, once on the night of Jan. 6 and again on Jan. 9 at 8:15 p.m. Five minutes later on Jan. 9, the pair held up a store at 166 First Ave. near E. 10th St. Their first victim that evening was at 7:36 p.m. at 79 Avenue A at E. Sixth St., police said.
The couple is also charged with robbing a victim at knifepoint while he was walking out of a building at 12 E. Second St. between First and Second Aves. at 6:40 p.m. Jan. 24. The following day at 5:35 p.m., the couple robbed a victim in a store at 235 E. 13th St. at gunpoint and at 8 p.m. the same day they robbed a store at 402 E. 11th St. The last robbery was of a pedestrian at knifepoint at 8:45 p.m. on Jan. 30 on E. 12th St. between First and Second Aves., police said.
The couple is also charged with two robberies in Queens, one at gunpoint of a man, 75, in the Queens Plaza subway station on Christmas Day and another gunpoint heist on Dec. 30 of a woman on the street at Queens Plaza.
Washington Irving assault
A girl student, 15, at Washington Irving High School, one of a group of high schools on the city’s list of violent schools, was arrested on Thurs. Feb. 12 and charged with assaulting a school safety officer and injuring her, police said. The student was caught cutting class in the school on Irving Pl. between E. 16th and W. 17th Sts. and struggled when the safety officer was leading her to the principal’s office, police said.
The safety officer, who sustained a broken right index finger in the incident, was treated at Beth Israel Hospital and released. The suspect, whose name was not made public, was charged with assault and will be transferred to another school, according to a Department of Education spokesperson.
Teacher assault charge
A teacher at P.S. 751, a special education school at 113 E. Fourth St., was charged on Thurs. Feb. 12 with repeatedly kicking a 14-year-old boy after shoving him to the floor of the school gym, police said.
Shmuel Levit, 50, was charged with assault and placed on administrative duty in the school principal’s office pending a Department of Education investigation, according to a department spokesperson. Levit, a teacher since 1991, has been working at P.S. 751 for the past six years.
The incident occurred shortly before 11 a.m. when the boy refused to hand the teacher a ball, according to reports.
Arrest protestors
Port Authority police arrested four protestors, members of the No Police State Coalition, on Feb. 7 when they refused to follow a police order to move from in front of the World Trade Center PATH station. The protestors, Dennis Griggs, Joel Meyers, Geoffrey Blank and Jason Blank, were holding a sign reading “The Bush Regime Engineered 9/11.” They received a summons to appear in court on March 18.
Drivers hit officer
Two New Jersey men fleeing from police after running a red light at 2:40 a.m. Sat. Feb. 14, struck a police officer who got out of his car on E. 20th St. to stop them and then hit a cab and crashed into a fire hydrant at E. 20th St. at Third Ave., police said. The officer was taken to Bellevue Hospital with broken ribs. The men in the car, Darren Bishop, 21, of Essex County, and Alif Bass, 20, of Newark, were charged with assault.
Hit and run
The driver of a 2004 model Grand Prix traveling north on Sixth Ave. struck a westbound car at 17th St., which spun out of control and hit a parked car and severely injured two pedestrians at 1:45 a.m. Mon. Feb. 16, police said. The Grand Prix drove off and was found abandoned a short time later on W. 17th St. between Seventh and Eighth Aves., police said. The injured were taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital where one man, 30, was said to be in serious condition with a head injury and the other, 34, was in stable condition with leg and back injuries. Another man and a woman were treated at St. Vincent’s for minor injuries and released.
Murder trial begins
The trial of Rafael Colon, 65, charged with the strangling death of his neighbor, Dolly Castaño, 79, in April 2002, in the bathtub of her apartment at 419 W. 17th St. in the Robert Fulton Houses, began on Tues. Feb. 17. Castaño, a volunteer at the Fulton Senior Center, was known as the “Tea Lady” for bringing tea and coffee to her fellow seniors at the Center. According to news accounts, the defendant was known for standing outside the building and menacing neighbors, especially women.
Bank robbed
A man who entered the HSBC Bank branch at 207 Varick St. at 3:55 p.m. Wed. Feb. 11 passed a note to a teller demanding money and fled with an undetermined amount of cash, police said.
