Volume 75, Number 6 | June 29 – July 5, 2005
POLICE BLOTTER
Baruch Houses homicide
A Baruch Houses resident was shot to death at 11:30 p.m. Sun. June 26 in front of 90 Columbia St. on the west side of the Baruch complex, police said. The victim, identified as Carlos Rosario, 29, a resident of 555 F.D.R. Dr. on the east side of the Baruch Houses, has an arrest record for assault and narcotics, according to law enforcement sources. An unknown suspect shot him once in the chest on Sunday night and he was declared dead on arrival at Beth Israel hospital, police said. The case is under investigation and no arrests have been made yet, police said.
Indict N.Y.U. donors
A mother and her son, a former New York University undergraduate, were indicted June 16 by a federal court in Connecticut for defrauding several businessmen of $7.4 million by means of fake hedge funds, according to law enforcement officials,
It is the second federal fraud charge against Hakan Yalincak, 21, who was arrested in March in Connecticut on a charge of trying to deposit fraudulent checks for $43 million.
In the June 16 indictment, Yalincak and his mother, Ayferafet Yalincak, 50, were charged with giving a $1.2 million donation in 2004 to N.Y.U. out of an account that held money belonging to victims of the fraud.
N.Y.U. used the money to build a lecture hall on E. Fourth St., the site of famed Bottom Line music club, where a plaque honors the Yalincak family for its donation. John Beckman, spokesman for the university, said N.Y.U. would return any unlawful funds.
The Yalincak family, including the father, Omer Bulent, emigrated from Istanbul, Turkey, and lived for a time in Japan, according to a New York magazine article. Ayferafet was convicted of a fraud in Indiana where she served a two-year prison term, the article says. Hakan became a student at N.Y.U. in 2001, but left without graduating after he was arrested last March.
Seek Chelsea club rapist
A man who abducted a woman patron of a Chelsea club last Halloween, raped, robbed and left her naked in an Elizabeth, N.J., alley, is being sought for a similar attempted abduction in Chelsea during the early hours of Fri. June 24, police said.
The suspect, described as a curly-haired white or Hispanic male, 5’6” tall and slender build, grabbed the latest victim, 26, at 4 a.m. on W. 24th St. near Ninth Ave., shortly after she left Cain, the club on W. 27th St. near 10th Ave., police said.
He pulled a knife, forced her into his car, raped her and drove her to Elizabeth where he let her go, police said.
The same man is also suspected of the attempted abduction last Sept. 14 of a woman, 29, on W. 28th St., between Eighth and Ninth Aves. as she was walking to work shortly before 6 a.m. The suspect punched the woman in the face, breaking her jaw and attempted to drag her into his car but failed and drove off, police said.
On Oct. 31, Halloween, the victim, 29, was leaving a costume event at CroBar on W. 28th St. at 10th Ave. dressed as a woman police officer when the suspect grabbed her, police said. The same man is also suspected of five attacks on women in Hillside, Elizabeth, Newark and North Bergen, N.J., in recent months, police said.
Soho transformer fire
A transformer explosion in a Con Edison underground substation in front of 172-174 Mercer St. at Houston St. at 7 p.m. Thurs. June 16 resulted in a fireball that injured a pedestrian and scorched the side of the building, according to a Fire Department spokesperson.
The injured man was taken to the New York Hospital Burn Center with second-degree burns on the back of his head. A possible short circuit in a cable is being investigated as a cause of the explosion, a Con Ed spokesperson said.
Hudson floater
Police retrieved the badly decomposed body of a white man in his 20s from the Hudson River north of the Gansevoort Peninsula at 10:25 a.m. Thurs. June 23. The Medical Examiner’s office is investigating the cause of death.
Albert Amateau
