Lure, stab deliveryman
Police from the Sixth Precinct apprehended two women in connection with the April 13 robbery and stabbing of a pizza deliveryman in the courtyard of a West Village apartment complex.
The victim, 21, was apparently lured to 72 Barrow St. by a fake pizza order at 10:36 p.m. when a group of three or four women held him up at knifepoint in the courtyard and demanded money, police said. The robbers took $50 and cut the man on the chest but his shouts for help alerted neighbors who phoned 911 and spotted the women fleeing.
Police Officer Matthew Ramsing, who was on foot patrol at Hudson and Christopher Sts., saw a woman running from the scene, chased and apprehended her. A neighbor who witnessed the robbery accompanied police in a patrol car and pointed out the other suspect, who was arrested.
Charged with robbery and assault were Chanane Flemister and Nedia Johnson, both 19. Police did not give the addresses of the suspects and are still looking for other possible accomplices.
The victim, employed by a pizza place on Bleecker St. at Seventh Ave. S., sustained minor injuries and was treated at St. Vincent’s Hospital and released, police said.
Palladium murder arrest
A new suspect was arrested on April 15 for the 1990 murder of Marcus Peterson, a bouncer at the former Palladium disco on E. 14th St., but District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau has not absolved the two men convicted and currently serving prison terms for the crime.
The new defendant, Thomas Morales, known as Spanky, was indicted three weeks ago for second-degree murder after an investigation by the district attorney’s Cold Case Squad. He was identified by the district attorney’s office as the third shooter in the Nov. 23, 1990, incident, in which Peterson and another Palladium security guard who survived were shot.
David Lemus and Olmado Hidalgo were convicted and sentenced in 1992. Their convictions have been upheld on appeals, but Steven Cohen, the lawyer who hopes to free them, has won a new hearing, which continued this week.
Awaiting extradition
Norman Dennis, arrested in a Los Angeles suburb on March 22 for the murder 19 years earlier of his former girlfriend on the grounds of the Rutgers Houses on the Lower East Side, was still in California on April 19 awaiting extradition to New York, according to law enforcement officials.
The victim, Sharon Copeland, was 25 and a single mother when she was shot to death in March 1986 behind 45 Rutgers St. at the corner of Madison St. The suspect fled and remained at large until earlier this year when an F.B.I. fingerprint record linked Dennis to a Norman Kearse who had been arrested in California. Police said the suspect acknowledged when he was arrested that he was Dennis, now 48.
Try a paper shredder?
Firefighters responded to a call of a smell of smoke on E. 12th St. at University Pl. on Sun., April 17, at 6 p.m. They went to the sixth floor of 31 E. 12th St., where they reportedly encountered a tenant burning papers in her sink. Ladders 3 and 9 and Engines 5 and 14 responded.
