Volume 74, Number 24 | Octuber 13 – 19 , 2004
Police Blotter
Trans model dies
A transsexual model whose anguished life was the subject of a recent 16-mm film, leaped to her death on Sunday morning Oct. 10 from her Chelsea apartment, police and witnesses said.
Susan Shah, 36, a native of Mexico, jumped from the window of her 20th floor apartment on W. 24th St. just east of Sixth Ave. at 4:30 a.m., police said. She left no note but friends said she had been fighting AIDS for the past 10 years and had recent health problems.
She had made two recent suicide attempts that were thwarted by friends, according to the New York Post.
Her 16-mm movie, “A Step Ahead,” is about her sex change from male to female. She also had two X-rated, fee-based Web sites and appeared in a porn video billed as Princess Shah.
Chelsea shooting
An argument between two men in front of 428 W. 26th St. in the Elliott Chelsea Houses at 1:30 p.m. on Sun., Oct. 10, ended when one of them pulled a handgun, fired a shot into the lower abdomen of the victim and fled, police said. The victim, 26, got to St. Vincent’s Hospital on his own and underwent surgery. Police declined to identify the victim and there were no arrests.
Gunplay on Fifth Ave.
A man who sustained cuts on his face and chest in a fight at 5 a.m. Mon., Oct. 11, on Fifth Ave. near 22nd St. ran to his car parked at the curb, pulled out a gun and fired a shot at his fleeing adversary, police said. The bullet ended up in a leather couch in a furniture store window and the shooter drove off but was arrested a block away where he was found sitting in his parked car. Police recovered the 9-mm pistol and charged Francisco Blanden, 25, of 100 W. 93rd St., with public endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon. The other man in the fight was not apprehended.
Robbery indictments
A Brooklyn man has been arraigned on indictments for two robberies in June and July of women at subway stations in Chelsea and the Lower East Side, according to the office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau.
Curtis Kimbrough, 48, who was arrested July 22 in connection with the Lower East Side robbery, pleaded not guilty in both cases and is being held on $30,000 bail until his Oct. 21 court appearance.
Kimbrough was charged with attacking one woman on the morning of June 28 as she was walking down the stairs of the 23rd St./Broadway station. Kimbrough shoved the victim, 37, to the ground, injuring her hand and her knee, snatching her necklace and fleeing, according to the indictment handed up on Sept. 15.
He is also charged with following a woman, 45, down the stairs of the subway station on Houston St. and Second Ave. on the afternoon of July 22 and grabbing a gold chain from her neck. Two police officers who heard the victim scream chased Kimbrough as he ran out of the station. Two other officers joined the chase and the four of them arrested Kimbrough on Ludlow St. between Stanton and Rivington Sts.
One for the books
The Scholastic bookstore at 557 Broadway between Prince and Spring Sts. told police that a thief made off with a laptop computer valued at $2,500 from an eighth-floor office at about 7 p.m. Mon., Oct. 4. The thief apparently carried the computer past employees and patrons in the ground-floor store but might have been recorded by a surveillance camera. Detectives at the First Precinct are looking at the store videotapes, police said.
Watch the images
A thief who lurked among the people in a crowded photo session at noon on Sun., Oct. 3, in a studio at 595 Broadway between Prince and Houston Sts. made off with a victim’s high-tech wristwatch valued at $10,000, police said.
Hotel room scam
Marco Stefano Marescotti, 35, was arrested and indicted last week for stealing more than $38,000 by booking rooms via an Internet site, in several hotels, including the Atrium at Bleecker and Thompson Sts., with stolen credit card numbers.
Marescotti is charged with posting the hotel rooms on Craigslist.org, claiming he had booked them but was unable to use them and offering them at $90 per night. He would take payment from people who responded and then book the rooms using stolen credit cards.
The hotels discovered some of the frauds and caught people in the rooms who didn’t know they had been booked with stolen cards. Both Craigslist.org and another Internet site, Hotels.com, helped the Police Department’s computer crimes squad break the case, according to D.A. Morgenthau’s office.
Not for sleeping
A Brooklyn man, 32, who fell asleep on a northbound No. 1 train Wednesday evening Oct. 6 woke up at 6:39 p.m. when a thief stole his bag and fled from the train at the Houston St. station, police said. The bag contained clothes and personal papers.
