Showing posts with label Elmhurst. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elmhurst. Show all posts

Thursday, July 18, 2024

El Queens Center Mariachi

https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1q9VOu.img?w=768&h=363&m=61010 WINS 

 Five people were charged on a 625-count indictment in connection to a gun trafficking operation that sold dozens of ghost guns, assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in Queens, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Wednesday.

The suspects charged in the operation allegedly transported 3D-printed ghost guns assembled in Nassau County and serialized firearms purchased in Indiana into Queens, where they were stored and sold, according to the Office of the Attorney General.

An investigation by the OAG’s Organized Crime Task Force in cooperation with Homeland Security Investigations and the NYPD recovered 86 firearms – including 55 ghost guns and 25 assault weapons – along with over 90 high-capacity magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Investigators began tracking Satveer Saini, 20, and his associates, Mateo Castro-Agudelo, 21, Hargeny Fernandez-Gonzalez, 20, Adam Youssef Senhaji-Rivas, 20, and Milanjit Sidhu, 20, in late 2023, according to the OAG.

During the investigation, Saini, Fernandez-Gonzalez, and Senhaji-Rivas allegedly paid over $27,000 to purchase firearms from Indiana, which has less restrictive gun laws than New York.

Early in the investigation, Saini and Castro-Agudelo drove from Indianapolis to Queens with weapons purchased in Indiana when they were stopped for speeding by the Ohio State Highway Patrol in Medina County, Ohio. During the stop, police recovered nine unloaded serialized handguns from inside Saini’s rental car.

From this point on, Fernandez-Gonzalez allegedly began paying Sidhu to drive weapons from Indianapolis to Queens.

Fernandez-Gonzalez also allegedly bought 3D-printed ghost guns in Nassau County and brought them to Queens.  Saini, Castro-Agudelo, and Senhaji-Rivas all allegedly sold trafficked firearms, high-capacity magazines, and ammunition during the course of the investigation.

Saturday, May 21, 2022

Biking to work on Queens Boulevard


It was bike to work day Friday so I thought I would see if other riders would be making the trek on the longest bike lane in Queens. Considering how perfect the weather was, very little decided to participate. Which is how it is every day on this route.

Thursday, May 12, 2022

Cop's son shot in a ride-by near Maspeth High

 https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/teen-shot-maspeth-032.jpg 

NY Post

The teenage son of an NYPD cop was shot across the street from his high school in Queens Wednesday afternoon, police sources said.

The 17-year-old, who was hit in the left arm, ran bleeding into Maspeth High School in Elmhurst after the 1:40 p.m. incident and was taken to Elmhurst Hospital as the youth’s girlfriend looked on and was “crying,” according to witnesses and law enforcement sources. 

The teen, a student at the school, was expected to survive, according to police.

The suspects fled down 74th Street on scooters and were arrested shortly after, cops said. 

The shooter was also a student at the school. 

One student, Isaiah Perez, told The Post the victim was with one of his friends and was on the way to the gym. 

“I was inside school on the second floor and they ended up locking the building down completely…I saw [the victim’s] girlfriend crying,” Perez said. 

“I went up to her and asked what was going on. I saw him on the stretcher with the patch on his arm so he was shot in the arm.”

Perez said he was “surprised” because the victim was “not that kind of person to go out and cause trouble like that. I wouldn’t see anything like that happening.”

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Pizza avengers

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/queens-pizza-84.jpg?quality=75&strip=all

NY Post 

A heroic pizzeria owner and his father are fighting for their lives after being stabbed multiple times when they jumped in to stop a 61-year-old woman from being robbed outside their Queens restaurant, relatives and police told The Post on Tuesday.

Louie Suljovic, a 38-year-old military veteran, was working behind the counter of his Elmhurst pizzeria, Louie’s, when he and his father, Cazim Suljovic, saw the elderly woman being robbed by two men Saturday night.

Without hesitation, Suljovic and his 68-year-old father jumped in to help — but ended up being stabbed and struck with an unidentified object, cops said.

Both father and son suffered punctured lungs in the attack, a relative told The Post.

“Cazim is in a serious situation … Louie is improving, he’s hanging in there and I believe he’s going to be okay,” said Cazim’s cousin, Remzija.  

Robert Whack, 30, and 18-year-old Supreme Gooding were taken into custody over the attack. Both were charged with robbery, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.  

Whack was also found with a large amount of what cops believe was heroin and was hit with a criminal possession of a controlled substance charge, police said.

The father and son are being treated at Elmhurst Hospital — the same facility where the pizzeria donated meals to staff and first responders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Queens elected officials endorse basement dwellings because they lived in them

 


LIC Post 

A group of Queens officials who have lived in basement apartments themselves said Wednesday that calls to remove such units are not realistic.

Critics who want the city to crack down on illegal basement apartments and end their use say the units are unsafe and lead to overcrowding. They point to the 11 New Yorkers who died last week when flooding from Hurricane Ida turned their subterranean homes into death traps.

However, advocates of basement units and elected officials such as Queens Borough President Donovan Richards say the city should find a way to legalize the units, while increasing safety standards. They note the city has little choice but to adopt this approach.

Richards, who held a media roundtable with Congress Members Grace Meng and Hakeem Jeffries Wednesday, said people will continue to live in basement-level apartments as long as there’s a housing affordability crisis in the city.

“One of the reasons people in Queens County live in basements is because we’re in an affordability crisis and basements play a key role in providing affordable housing,” Richards said. “… We’re going to need some real solutions moving forward on how we bring these illegal basements into compliance with the city.”

The three elected officials said the city needs to have a serious conversation and come up with a plan to address the multitude of basement apartments across the city.

There are 312,658 such units that could potentially be converted to safe, legal and affordable homes, according to NYC BASE Campaign, a group formed to fight for the legalization of basement apartments in New York City.

Richards said he has lived in basement apartments himself.

“I’m a basement baby I like to say,” he said. “A basement apartment helped get me through college as well to an extent.”

Meng said she also spent the early years of her life in a basement apartment.

“I too am a basement baby,” she said. “I spent the first six years of my life in a basement in Queens and Donovan’s right, people are going to live in basements whether we like it or not — whether we legalize them or not, they are going to live in basements.”

Likewise, Jeffries said he lived basement apartments in college, graduate school and even during his first four years as a Congress member in Washington D.C.

“Basement apartments are a reality because we have a housing crisis that exists here in New York City and the United States of America,” Jeffries said.

Meng said that she met a seven-month-old “garage baby” Tuesday while out surveying storm damage and assisting constituents in her district. The garage was converted into a small two-bedroom apartment, which was flooded in the storm.

She said the family didn’t know it was illegal for them to be housed in a garage. In fact, most tenants of basement apartments who she spoke to didn’t know their homes were illegal, Meng said.

Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Elmhurst war memorial bombed with profane graffiti

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E25m9TQXwAgQgMR?format=jpg&name=large 

NY Post

A Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Elmhurst, Queens was desecrated with swastikas, profane graffiti and the term “baby killers.”

New York City Councilman Robert Holden shared images of the vandalism on Twitter Wednesday, and vowed to work with police to make an arrest.

“I am deeply disgusted by this cowardly act of vandalism at the Queens Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” the Democrat wrote.

“I am working… to make sure the perpetrator is brought to justice. I offer a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the sick soul who did it.”

This fucking city...

Friday, April 23, 2021

The Elmhurst Horror

 

 Impunity City

It happened on a cold early morning just an hour before sunrise, 6 days before Christmas, a 5-alarm fire engulfed a three family house. The inferno spread so rapaciously that it instantly killed three men as they desperately tried to flee while trapped in their rooms, their only exit was sliding doors by the balcony on the second floor, which were locked. It also torched the three floor house attached to it, making both structures inhabitable.

Before the deadly blaze the house was proficiently and exceedingly habitable. Since the fire was extinguished, a lot of mystery still surrounds this tragedy. Not much is known about the tenants; especially their names which have not been identified, notably the three who perished in the inferno except for their ethnicity. The one tenant who survived the destruction and the deaths, also refused to be identified.

This house had an incredible lengthy record of housing violations going back 4 years with over $200,000 in fines. Mostly in the last two years, the former landlord had repurposed what was once a nice two family house and transformed it into a makeshift boarding house with single room occupations constructing seven rooms on each floor from the basement to the attic. Even the garage wasn’t spared as the original landlord , Mumarrawa Mahmood, managed to convert it into a rental where the superintendent of the house lived and added more dwellings to it even after repeated visits and fines by the Department Of Buildings.

 This house must have been a sanctuary for the victims of this city's perpetual housing crisis (especially in two terms under Mayor de Blasio), especially those working check to check and undocumented immigrants, essential workers mostly doing gig jobs delivering food or driving for apps and working construction building towers they will never afford to live in.

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Here comes Hiram again

Queens Post 

The twice convicted and disgraced politician Hiram Monserrate is once again trying to make a comeback to public office.

The former State Senator and Council Member — who was convicted of misdemeanor assault in 2009 and for the misuse of taxpayer money in 2012 — has filed to challenge Council Member Francisco Moya for the 21st Council district seat, which covers East Elmhurst, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona.

Monserrate’s filing with the NYC Campaign Finance Board was first reported by the Queens Eagle.

In 2010, Monserrate was expelled from the State Senate after he was found guilty of misdemeanor assault. According to the charges, on Dec. 19, 2008 he slashed his girlfriend’s face with broken glass  before dragging her through the lobby his Jackson Heights apartment building.

Two years later, Monserrate pleaded guilty for misusing more than $100,000 in taxpayer money while he was a city council member in 2006 and 2007. He was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay back the money.

The Democrat has repeatedly tried to get back into public off office despite his convictions.

 

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Landlord suspected of starting fire in illegally converted Elmhurst house

 


 NY Post

An FDNY dog found traces of accelerant on three gloves inside the car of a Queens landlord whose apartment house burned down in a suspicious fire that killed three people, police sources told The Post.

Cops and fire investigators were searching the home and Toyota 4Runner of Eric Chen in Flushing late Tuesday, when the canine made the discovery, the sources said.

Police seized the SUV, as well as digital recording equipment, a computer monitor and a hard drive, the sources said.

No arrests have been made in the case and no charges have been brought.

Chen, 29, purchased the home at 90-31 48th Ave. in February, and had since tried evict eight tenants who remained in the house.

Building department records show that as many as 60 people may have lived in the home at one point — one of 26 open violations at the three-family Elmhurst home.

Most of the violations occurred before Chen bought the property, records show.

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Arson suspected in illegally converted house fire in Elmhurst

 

 


NY Daily News 

 Investigators are narrowing in on arson as the likely cause of a blaze that killed three people in Queens, law enforcement sources said Monday.

 Investigators found traces of an accelerant inside the gutted three-story home on 48th Ave. near 91st St. in Elmhurst, suggesting the deadly fire may have been intentionally set. Other possible causes are still being probed, the sources said.

Security video shows someone leaving the building right before the fire started, the sources said. No suspect has been identified.

 

 

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Squatters die in Elmhurst inferno


From the NY Post:

The Fire Department said it received a 5:37 a.m. call for the blaze Saturday at 90-31 48th Ave. It went to a third-alarm at 6:16 a.m.

A neighbor said the three-story house was vacant and that the men who died were squatters.

There were more than 60 people living in the house in early 2020, according to a complaint received by the city Department of Buildings in January 2020 from someone who wanted to rent a room there and “witnessed people using drugs and the whole house smell of marijuana.”

The DOB had issued a partial vacate order in February 2018 because the basement was illegally converted into six living units.

Update: Another person was found dead in the house

Thursday, October 1, 2020

It took only one day

 John F. Kennedy Jr. School Queens 

1010 WINS

  A Queens school has closed due to the coronavirus for the first time this year, officials announced Thursday.

The John F. Kennedy Jr. School in Elmhurst became the first city school to prompt a 14-day quarantine protocol after two unrelated coronavirus cases were confirmed among staff or students.

The DOE could not immediately disclosed who was infected.

According to the Department of Education, action would be taken when two or more COVID-19 infections were confirmed at the same school with no links between the infected students.

“We hope to return to the building on Wednesday, October 13,” a letter from school officials said.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Sidewalk homeless shelter has been in Elmhurst since April


Elmhurst Encampment

1010 WINS

 A homeless encampment in Queens that has garnered dozens of 311 complaints since April is still set up — and causing myriad problems for nearby businesses.

Since April 1, neighbors have filed 49 complaints about the encampment at Whitney Avenue and Broadway in Elmhurst, which usually comprises between 10 and 20 homeless people.

The encampment is still there, however, and the 311 complaints filed about it have been resolved with phrases including "closed," "non-crime corrected," and "refused assistance."

William Zheng, whose cousin runs a restaurant across the street from the setup, told 1010 WINS homeless people who live at and frequent the encampment scare off patrons and leave garbage behind.

Nearby businesses end up getting fined for the trash, he said.

Asked about the encampment, NYPD Sergeant Jessica McRorie said police haven’t been able to respond to it because budget cuts eliminated the department’s homeless outreach unit. 

 

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Elmhurst half-house to be demolished!

Hey all,

One of the very first dung piles featured on this blog was the "Elmhurst Half-House" back on December 9, 2006. This spectacular architectural abortion featured a low-rise attached house converted into a 4 story modern nightmare but still appearing to be attached to its former twin.

Well, the NYIMBY blog brings us the news that demolition permits were filed back in May for the smaller building. The replacement will be 4 stories with 7 units.

I'm not sure which is worse at this point: the house in its current embarrassing condition or the replacement.

Saturday, April 25, 2020

Escape from an Elmhurst adult care center



Propublica

As the coronavirus races through nursing homes and assisted living facilities across the country, many desperate family members are finding themselves like Roland, unable to learn the truth about what is happening inside.
 

In story after story, the owners of beleaguered facilities — because of greed, incompetence or fear — have kept the reality of circumstances murky or misleading.

 Many state health departments nationwide are refusing to provide up-to-date, or in some cases any, facility-specific numbers on COVID-19 deaths or infections to the family members of residents, to journalists or even to local politicians. 

And in New York, which has just begun releasing some information, state officials are relying on nursing homes to accurately report deaths and infections.
 

As a result, family members and local officials are turning into detectives and activists, forming alliances to track down clues about what’s happening inside the homes and what, if anything, state health departments are doing about it.

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Not so essential construction continues during state shutdown, including the Target in Elmhurst


The list of “essential” construction projects and permitted work has ballooned sixfold since Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a virtual construction shutdown last month, Department of Buildings data shows.

Some 4,936 job sites are now allowed to be worked on, up from about 800 on April 3, according to the Buildings Department.

Among them: hotels in Manhattan and Brooklyn, a new Queens Target, and, as the Columbia Spectator first reported, the future home of Columbia University’s business school.

The greenlighted projects also include renovation work on rental buildings under an exception for a “sole worker,” raising concerns for tenants.

Under a revision of its original shutdown guidance, the state has expanded “essential” building work beyond primarily infrastructure projects, hospitals and affordable housing.

As long as ground already has been broken, construction now can also proceed on any type of business that’s allowed to continue in-person operations during the state’s coronavirus-driven “pause.”

That broader list includes hotels, restaurants, convenience stores, banks, appliance stores and storage facilities, among other businesses. Public and private school construction is also permitted.

One worker on a Manhattan hotel project fumed, saying his bosses were treating the pandemic like “a joke.”

“To make the hotel essential, they might as well open every job, because that hotel is far from essential,” he said. “That hotel is deemed essential while we are deemed expendable.”

The city’s rules for “essential business” construction appear somewhat narrower than the state’s.

Work on “essential businesses” can proceed only “if it pertains to alterations of existing buildings and has been permitted by the department prior to April 15, 2020, the city guidance says.

DOB notes that the vast majority of the 35,000 sites that were ordered shuttered in March are still closed. But some local residents say they’ve been shocked to see work going forward on a wide-ranging set of long-term projects while the pandemic still claims hundreds of lives per day.

The far-from-complete Target site in Elmhurst, also slated to contain a Starbucks and a Chipotle, will eventually house some type of “ambulatory diagnostic treatment or healthcare facilities” above the 23,000-square-foot big box store, city filings show. So the Department of Buildings is allowing construction to continue.

Patricia Chou, a member of the grassroots community group Queens Neighborhoods United, which has long opposed the development, said that while a medical office may be in the offing, the core of the planned facility is still a shopping center.

“Our primary concerns are that they are endangering workers at the site and exploiting loopholes to complete this project,” she said.



Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Anyone see a common thread here?

From the NY Times:

The chockablock density that defines this part of Queens may have also have been its undoing. Doctors and community leaders say poverty, notoriously overcrowded homes and government inaction left residents especially vulnerable to the virus.

From Huffington Post:

You call your district the “epicenter of the epicenter.” What makes your district specifically so vulnerable to all this?

"Well, we have a lot of service workers that live here, undocumented folks that live here, immigrants who are here, and oftentimes, we see that those folks are of lower income, and in order to survive, they have to live in overcrowded, illegally converted homes, which only makes the spread of COVID worse. So there’s really no place for many people who live in my community to self-isolate because sometimes they live 20 to 25 people in a house. We’ve seen this on numerous occasions here in the district." - King Tweeder Council Member Danny Dromm


But remember, folks, if you want to downzone your neighborhood or prevent out of character development, you're racist and should move to the suburbs.

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Hate to say that I told you so...*

New York Times

 
Anil Subba, a Nepali Uber driver from Jackson Heights, Queens, died just hours after doctors at Elmhurst Hospital thought he might be strong enough to be removed from a ventilator.
In the nearby Corona neighborhood, Edison Forero, 44, a restaurant worker from Colombia, was still burning with fever when his housemate demanded he leave his rented room, he said.

Not far away in Jackson Heights, Raziah Begum, a widow and nanny from Bangladesh, worries she will be ill soon. Two of her three roommates already have the symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Everyone in the apartment is jobless, and they eat one meal a day, she said.

“We are so hungry, but I am more terrified that I will get sick,” said Ms. Begum, 53, who has diabetes and high blood pressure.

In a city ravaged by the coronavirus, few places have suffered as much as central Queens, where a seven-square-mile patch of densely packed immigrant enclaves recorded more than 7,000 cases in the first weeks of the outbreak.

The chockablock density that defines this part of Queens may have also have been its undoing. Doctors and community leaders say poverty, notoriously overcrowded homes and government inaction left residents especially vulnerable to the virus.

“I don’t think the city communicated the level of danger,” said Claudia Zamora, the interim deputy director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment, an advocacy group and worker center in Jackson Heights.

In early March, she said, city health officials sent out fliers with hand-washing tips, but not the outreach workers and multilingual posters that might have conveyed the looming peril.

The sick now include laborers like Ángel, 39, a construction worker from Ecuador who asked that only his first name be used because of his immigration status.

Like many, he said he worked at a Manhattan construction site until he fell ill. He said he was turned away from Elmhurst Hospital because his symptoms were not deemed life-threatening and had been suffering in the apartment in Corona he shares with three other workers. “I don’t have anyone to help me,” he said. 

 City officials rejected the suggestion that they left the city’s immigrant neighborhoods to fend for themselves. The Department of Health, officials said, created coronavirus fact sheets in 15 languages. Officials mounted multilingual public service campaigns in subways and on television, and have provided continuous updates to the ethnic media including on the need for social distancing.


*Title provided by Crappy