Lucky gun jam Police arrested one of two suspects on Tues., March 18, for an East Village robbery the week before in which the victim escaped death when the gun put pointblank in his face jammed twice.
Ashford Pyle, 18, of 205 Avenue C, and his accomplice, both with scarves wrapped around their faces, tried to snatch a gold chain from the victim at gunpoint in the E. 13th St. cul-de-sac east of Avenue B in the Tanya Towers complex, according to the complaint. The victim, 27, ran but the suspects caught him, knocked him to the ground and pistol-whipped him, police said.
Pyle is charged with putting the silver-colored handgun against the victim’s cheekbone under his left eye and pulling the trigger twice while his accomplice shouted, “Shoot him. Just shoot him,” according to the criminal complaint filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The gun jammed and the suspects fled without the chain, according to the police. The accomplice is still at large.
Pyle is being held in lieu of $20,000 bail pending an arraignment on March 25.
Rape-attempt suspect Anthony Rosado, 19, arrested on Fri., March 14, and charged with attempting to rape two Village women in separate incidents on March 2, was freed last week pending further investigation after DNA samples from the attacks did not match the suspect.
Rosado, of no fixed address, was picked out of a lineup by the victims and the charges against him are still pending, according to a spokesperson for Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau.
One of the victims, 30, was attacked at Bleecker and Carmine Sts. at 2:15 a.m. but fought off her assailant, and the other victim, 26, fought off her assailant at 2:30 a.m. on Barrow St. between Hudson and Greenwich Sts.
Saved from fire Firefighters rescued an elderly woman and her home healthcare aide from a fire that engulfed their third-floor apartment in the Jacob Riis Houses in the East Village around 4 p.m. Sat., March 22. The victims were taken to the Weill Cornell Burn Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital, where the elderly woman was said to be in critical condition. A firefighter who reached the victims in a tower-ladder bucket also sustained minor injuries and was treated at St. Vincent’s Hospital. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Bookkeeper arrested Felicia Blackman, 44, former bookkeeper for the Cooper Square Committee, was arrested Fri., March 21, and charged with grand larceny for writing herself more than 40 checks from the committee’s bank account between June 24, 2005, and Nov. 7, 2007, according to the office of D.A. Morgenthau. Blackman was employed at the committee, the nonprofit, affordable-housing developer and manager, until December shortly after the larceny was discovered, according to Steve Herrick, the committee’s executive director.
Kitty neglect Martin Walsh, of 44 E. 11th St., was arrested on March 18 and charged with animal cruelty for neglecting the cat that he owned for 15 years. Walsh was charged after he brought the old animal with multiple ailments, including emaciation, dehydration, chronic liver and kidney disease and a bleeding tumor on its right paw, to the Berg Memorial Hospital in January to be euthanized.
Walsh, 54, said he never took the cat to a vet during the previous 15 years, and the hospital filed the animal-cruelty charge. But Walsh’s lawyer moved to have the charge dismissed on the grounds that failure to provide medical care did not meet the legal definition that Walsh’s neglect allowed the cat to suffer “unjustifiable physical pain.”
But a judge disagreed and said that a trial was necessary to decide the issue of justifiability.
Walsh is free on his own recognizance pending an April 16 court appearance.
Pizza fling Martin Krause, 32, who hails from Tampa, Fla., was arrested after throwing a slice of pizza in a man’s face and punching him at 3:55 a.m. Sat., March 22, in front of 111 MacDougal St., police said. Krause began screaming inside the pizza parlor before stepping outside and flinging the slice in the face of the victim, 23. The suspect then punched the victim in the face and knocked a tooth out, police said.
Bag-grab try Police arrested Eduardo Corona, 16, and charged him with trying to rob a woman, 31, of her handbag just past midnight on Sun., March 16, as she was entering her Knickerbocker Village building on Monroe St. at Market St. When the victim refused to hand over her bag, the suspect punched her in the face, giving her a bloody nose and a black eye. She called 911 and police arrested Corona, of 117 Madison St., on an attempted-robbery charge.
Albert Amateau
