A Queens middle school teacher charged with statutory rape has pleaded guilty and is expected to be sentenced to six months in jail as part of a plea deal, officials said. Daniel Reilly, 36, admitted to having sex multiple times at his Forest Hills home with a 14-year-old girl he used to teach, said District [...]
A homeless man has been charged with sexually abusing two South Ozone Park girls in separate incidents, District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced Tuesday. Lee Samuel, 25, is currently awaiting arraignment on charges of a first-degree criminal sexual act, endangering the welfare of a child and forcible touching. The hunt for the suspect had the Queens [...]
BY MAGGIE HAYES AND TERENCE M. CULLEN The quest to curb gun violence continues. Politicians within the borough are searching for what they can do at a local level. Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr., Chair of the Public Safety Committee, says gun buybacks can be effective in getting some old guns off the street, but will [...]
BY CRISTABELLE TUMOLA AND TERENCE M. CULLEN In light of several recent political scandals, including the arrests of Queens legislators Malcolm Smith and Dan Halloran, Governor Andrew Cuomo is cracking down on corruption. He announced the Public Trust act on Tuesday, April 9, which would make it easier to convict wrongdoers of public corruption under [...]
A year-long investigation brought the wheeling and dealing of a criminal couple’s auto shop scheme to a screeching halt. Hooshmand “Danny” Kohanano, 54, and his wife, Fereshteh “Jenny” Kohanano, 41, were charged with $730,000 worth of sales tax fraud in connection with their operation of the Auto Palace, Inc., a used car dealership at 53-21 [...]
A Bayside man faces murder charges for allegedly suffocating his father a little more than a year after drowning his mother, according to the district attorney. Gregory Cucchiara, 36, has been named in an indictment charging him with two counts of second-degree murder for beating his mother over the head before submerging her in water [...]
With no questions asked, hundreds of people walked into New Jerusalem Baptist Church in Jamaica and turned in 509 guns over the weekend. The gun buyback program, the first since 2009, netted an AK 47, tec-9, 245 revolvers, 168 semi-automatic pistols and a Calico 9mm with a 50 round capacity magazine. Participants received $200 for [...]
Community outreach and communication highlighted a pledge from officials and an announcement of a nine-point plan to put a ceasefire to gun violence in southeast Queens. The plan, revealed by District Attorney Richard A. Brown and a number of elected officials on Friday, August 17, came on the eve of a buy back program in [...]
The shells are gone, but the discussion over whose responsibility it is to keep the streets safe has broken out into a different sort of fire fight. After a wave of citywide violence that included several deaths in Queens, elected officials and the NYPD have each said the other side has to do more to [...]
A large-scale bust landed 45 people – alleged members of two drug organizations operating in southeast Queens – in jail on drug, weapons and other charges. The two organizations were allegedly being run by a set of the Bloods street gang known as the “South Side Bloods” and by James “Wall” Corley, an original member [...]
