‘Crusty’ woman dies after clash
Police responded to a call from 202 E. Sixth St. near the Bowery at 11:56 a.m. Sat., May 9, and found a young woman in apartment No. 5 unconscious. She was declared dead by emergency medical technicians at 12:06 p.m. and the case was referred to the Medical Examiner’s Office. Police identified her as Lesia Pupshaw, 26.
According to police, “Five to six men had been throwing bottles at her earlier Friday night.”
Local photographer and blogger Bob Arihood on his Neither More Nor Less blog, gives a more detailed account of an ongoing feud between a group of local Hispanic youths and the Tompkins Square Park “crusties.” According to Arihood, there were at least three or four separate, increasingly violent run-ins between the two groups over the past week.
“One of those confrontations, the one on Friday night, resulted in the injury and hospitalization of a male crusty and a young woman being brutally battered on the head and face,” Arihood wrote. “The Friday night confrontation, which began with taunts and threats, evolved into serious physical violence. This ultimately violent confrontation was perhaps responsible for the death of a young woman, who with brutal head injuries, returned to an apartment on Sixth St. and sometime later Saturday morning died. … Another witness, not a crusty, whom the police did not believe, claimed that she had seen the young males responsible for the young woman’s injuries late Saturday afternoon in Tompkins Square Park near the Seventh St. and Avenue A entrance.”
According to Arihood, the suspects and crusties clashed again on Sunday night. Witnesses identified the suspects as “three light-skinned Hispanic males in their mid-to-late teens, one wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball cap.” The local males threw water balloons, hurled taunts and ran. The crusties chased them to Avenue D and Fourth St., where a box cutter, a pipe and bottles emerged. Outnumbered and on “hostile turf,” the crusties retreated to Tompkins Square, where Arihood said he held a flashlight as glass was picked out of one crusty’s bloody scalp.
L.E.S. shooting
Police arrested David Sahimi, 17, at 5:50 p.m. Wed., May 6, in his home at 13 Clinton St. and charged him with attempted murder, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal mischief in connection with a shooting earlier at East Houston and Clinton Sts. The suspect fired three shots at three young men with whom he had a dispute, and then fled to his Clinton St. home between Houston and Stanton Sts., police said. One of the shots hit a car but no one was injured.
Bouncer murder trial
The trial of Darryl Littlejohn, 44, for the Feb. 24, 2006, rape and murder of Imette St. Guillen, 24, a John Jay College student kidnapped from The Falls, formerly at 218 Lafayette St., where Littlejohn was a bouncer, began Mon., May 11. The day after St. Guillen’s kidnapping, her naked and bound body was found near the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. Littlejohn is currently serving a 25-year-to-life prison sentence for the kidnapping of a York College co-ed four months before the St. Guillen murder. The defense intends to implicate Dan Dorrian, former owner of the now defunct bar, as a possible suspect, according to daily newspaper reports.
‘Wine bandit’ is corked
Police arrested Matheson Babbin, 18, of 527 E. 12th St., at the corner of Bedford and Barrow Sts. shortly before 7 a.m. Sun., May 3, and charged him with smashing the window of the Little Owl, 90 Bedford St. near Grove St., two hours earlier and making off with eight bottles of red wine. He was also charged with breaking into an apartment on E. 12th St. and Avenue B during the early hours of Feb. 19, taking bottles of wine and fleeing when the resident confronted him. Police are also investigating the suspect’s possible connection to an April 20 break-in of a restaurant at 122 Christopher St. where several bottles of booze were taken. On April 17 a suspect answering a different description stole several bottles of liquor from the Riviera Cafe on Seventh Ave. South at West Fourth St. but dropped them when he fled.
Domestic punch-up
A man was charged with punching his domestic partner and mother of their child in the face around 2 a.m. Wed., May 6, during a dispute on the northeast corner of West Houston and West Sts. Jason Cruz, 21, was charged with assault and failure to abide by an order of protection secured by the victim, also 21, who lives in New Rochelle.
‘He did The Monster slash…’
Police arrested a man, 40, in front of The Monster bar, 80 Grove St., for slashing a victim in the head with a knife during an argument shortly before 4 a.m. Sat., May 9, leaving the victim, 38, with scalp lacerations. The suspect, Shaun Handy, was charged with assault and also possession of a controlled substance when a plastic bag of cocaine was found on him at his arrest, police said.
Bread-line bristle
An argument between two women patrons waiting on line at Bread Factory, a bakery at 330 Bleecker St., at 5 a.m. Sat., May 9, ended with one of them picking up a broom and smashing her adversary in the head with the handle, police said. The suspect, Jerkeida Grant, 35, was charged with two counts of felony assault, and the victim, 28, of Brooklyn, went to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where she got eight stitches in her scalp.
Volume rage
A resident of the men’s shelter at 321 E. Fifth St. became angry about the TV volume in the shelter’s common room around 7 a.m. Sat., May 2, and threw water at another man and punched him, police said. The suspect, Jorge Santiago, 42, was being held in lieu of $4,000 bail pending a May 29 court date, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Delivery robbery
Police arrested Darrious Perez, 18, a resident of the Jacob Riis Houses at 132 Avenue D, for holding a gun to a delivery man from a Chinese restaurant and taking his food and a cell phone at about 3 p.m. Thurs., April 30, and then fleeing from the lobby of 466 E. 10th St. in the Riis Houses. Perez was arrested on Sat., May 2, when police and the victim spotted him in the neighborhood. He was freed on $2,000 bail pending an Aug. 11 court appearance.
Didn’t cut mustard
Police arrested Odalis Gonzalez, 19, on Sun., May 5, for trying to rob a man inside a deli at 52 Rivington St. around 2:15 a.m. The suspect shoved the door back, trapped the victim behind it and went through his pockets but fled without taking anything, according to the charges filed by the Manhattan district attorney. Police were called and the suspect was arrested nearby.
Wanted mosque money
The caretaker on the basement level of Masjid Medina mosque on First Ave. at E. 11th St. heard a noise on the main level at about 3:15 a.m. Tues., May 5. When he went up to investigate, he saw a man fleeing from a side door, according to police. The donation box was damaged but not opened and nothing was missing, according to reports.
Albert Amateau
