West Village mugging
Police arrested five teenagers, three of them younger than age 16, at Barrow and Hudson Sts. shortly after 6:30 a.m. Sat., Aug. 9, and charged them with beating and attempting to rob a 26-year-old woman. Carlton Eaglen, 17, of no fixed address, and Emira Beskovic, 18, of Manhattan, were charged with gang assault and attempted robbery. The three younger defendants were charged as juveniles in Family Court.
The five suspects repeatedly punched the victim in the face and one of the younger suspects hit the victim’s coffee container, splashing the hot liquid on her face, according to the complaint filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The suspects demanded the victim’s bag but she held onto it with the help of passersby who called police.
Cyclist dies after collision
Rasha Shamoon, above, who was struck by a Range Rover at 1:28 a.m. Tues., Aug. 5, while riding her bicycle across the intersection of Delancey St. and Bowery, died of her injuries in New York Presbyterian Hospital at 5 p.m. Sat., Aug. 9
Shamoon, 31, was crossing against the light, and the Range Rover’s driver remained at the scene and was not charged, police said. She was unconscious when she was taken to New York Downtown Hospital and was transferred to New York Presbyterian Hospital soon after, according to her friends.
Shamoon, a Catholic Iraqi who emigrated from Iraq with her family when she was 2, taught in the psychology departments of Hunter and LaGuardia colleges. She was biking home to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, when she was hit.
Murder charge
Robert Camerano, 61, was charged on Aug. 13, with the stabbing murder of his live-in companion, Michelle Hyams, on June 8 in their fourth-floor apartment at 85 Eighth Ave., near 14th St., according to the Manhattan district attorney. Camerano is being held without bail pending an Oct. 1 court appearance on the second-degree murder charge. The suspect, whose arrest record since 1982 includes robbery, drug violations and weapon possession, was charged with criminal mischief for throwing a chair through the two-way mirror in the 10th Precinct detective squad room when he was questioned in June on Hyams’s stabbing death.
Arrest traffic agent
Jacquline Davis, a traffic enforcement agent assigned to the Manhattan tow pound on Pier 76, surrendered on Thurs., Aug. 14, at the Sixth Precinct, where she was charged with stealing $4,518 from the tow pound command club. The club uses revenues generated by soda and snack machines on Pier 76, which is located at W. 36th St., to pay for various events for tow pound employees. The defendant made a series of unauthorized withdrawals between Jan. 10, 2006, and Feb. 15, 2007, from the club bank account by forging the signature of the club president, according to the office of Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau. She faces a third-degree grand larceny charge and 21 counts of second-degree forgery.
Courthouse assault
Rodolphe Nogbou was sentenced to 24 months in prison on Thurs., Aug. 14, by Judge John F. Keenan in Manhattan federal court for assaulting a court security officer on Aug. 22, 2007, in the federal court at 500 Pearl St.
Nogbou was convicted after a four-day trial in January of punching the security officer in the eye on his way into the courthouse. He had set off the walk-through metal detector alarm and the officer was using a hand-held metal detector that also went off just before the defendant punched him, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York’s Office.
Fire in the holes
Fires in two Con Edison manholes at 13th St. and Seventh Ave. brought firefighters and Con Ed crews to the scene at 10:50 a.m. Sat., Aug. 16, and interrupted electric service at the United Methodist Church on the northwest corner of the intersection for a few hours. Con Ed is investigating the cause of the fires.
Hudson floater
Police responded to a 911 call shortly before 1 p.m. Sat., Aug. 16, about a body floating in the water beneath one of the piers at Chelsea Piers. They retrieved the corpse of a white man not otherwise identified in the river off W. 18th St. The medical examiner reported that the autopsy failed to reveal the cause of death.
— Albert Amateau
