Police & Courts

An automatic fire alarm in the butler’s pantry at a Somers Place house in Sag Harbor was triggered on the morning of July 12. Firefighters attributed it to “overtoasted toast in the toaster.”

Fourteen people including Abigail Disney, a great-niece of Walt Disney and an activist who supports raising taxes on the wealthy, were arrested at East Hampton Town Airport on Friday after blocking vehicles from entering or exiting the airport's parking lot for about 90 minutes. One activist described the demonstration as intending to call out "the very grotesque, reckless consumption of the 1 percent" and its impact on climate change.

A proposed amendment to the East Hampton Town code would allow volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers with two years of qualifying service to apply for a partial tax exemption.

Rip currents kept East Hampton Town and Village lifeguards busy over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, but this week the story was less red flags and more “elevated marine life”: Some 20 sharks, mostly spinner sharks but also threshers, were spotted off Main Beach on Saturday and farther off town beaches as well.

A 72-year-old Sag Harbor Village resident was taken by ambulance to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital on Friday evening for treatment of a serious dog bite. The man told police his dog had been fighting with another dog on Bay Street and he’d been bitten while trying to break it up.

An East Hampton Town police officer has filed a complaint with New York State's Division of Human Rights asserting that she has been a victim of sexual harassment and retaliatory working conditions, and has been denied promotions based on her gender.

On May 25, the day before a fire tore through Maison Close restaurant at 435 East Lake Drive in Montauk, David Browne, the chief fire marshal for the town, did a routine fire inspection and found 11 violations. Four involved improper use of electrical cords and three more cited overdue servicing of fire suppression equipment. In the official report from the fire marshal's office none of those were blamed, and the cause of the fire was listed as undetermined.

There was another shoplifting incident at the Balenciaga store recently, though nothing on the scale of the one last year, when an organized ring of five thieves made off with $94,000 in luxury handbags and led police on a high-speed chase before being captured. On June 25, a woman stole a $520 pair of sunglasses while her male companion was making a purchase. Surveillance cameras caught the incident on tape.

State Attorney General Letitia James has announced the sentencing of a Bridgehampton investment adviser to one to three years in prison for what she described as a “multi-million-dollar securities and loan fraud scheme that cheated dozens of New Yorkers out of nearly $7 million.

This week Senior Chief Nathaniel J. O’Connell relieved Master Chief William B. Harris, who has served as Officer in Charge of Station Montauk for the past four years.

A June 17 traffic stop on Pantigo Road in front of East Hampton Justice Court led to felony weapons charges for an Islip Terrace man.

After pleading guilty in January to first-degree manslaughter in the 2022 death of Kevin Somers, Marc Dern of Springs was sentenced in a negotiated disposition Monday to five years in prison and five years of supervised release.

It won’t just be birds, helicopters, and seaplanes trailing banners up above East Hampton Village beaches this summer — add drones to the list.

On Friday at about 1:30 p.m., police received a call about “a possible deceased human body” found on a beach at Montauk State Park. Officers determined it to be “the silicone lower part of a female mannequin.”

The big booms are back, it seems, in Montauk. Late last Thursday night, a caller reported hearing one in the vicinity of the Surf Lodge. An officer responded but couldn’t find anything amiss, and the call was deemed “unfounded.” Two nights later, two more people made similar reports, but again, officers found nothing.

The East Hampton Town Police Department is seeking the public's help in finding Lucas T. Desario, a town resident who was last seen several days ago. Mr. Desario's vehicle and belongings were found on South Eton Street in Montauk earlier today.

Adina Azarian, an East Hampton real estate broker, her 2-year-old daughter, Aria, and her nanny, Evadnie Smith, who were killed in a plane crash along with the pilot, were like a family, Ms. Azarian had written. While she was a single mother, Ms. Azarian wrote that “the reality is, I do have a partner in raising her, she just happens to be a lovely woman with a backbone from Jamaica. . . . Every family is unique and in ours Aria rules the roost. . . ”

Surveillance camera footage helped police catch a man in a red truck who stole “Steven Tekulsky for Sag Harbor Justice” signs not far from the police station on Division Street in Sag Harbor on Saturday afternoon. He was charged with petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, low-level misdemeanors.

In the absence of other contested races in the upcoming Sag Harbor Village elections, all eyes have turned to the race for Sag Harbor Village justice, which pits two attorneys against each other. Steven Tekulsky, at present an East Hampton Town justice and an associate Sag Village justice, is running against Carl Irace, a Sag Harbor resident with no formal judicial experience.

Adina Azarian, an East Hampton real estate broker, and her 2-year-old daughter, Aria, were among those killed when the private plane in which they were returning to Long Island on Sunday crashed in Virginia. The pilot and a nanny were apparently also killed in the crash. 

Smoke was reported across the East End on Saturday morning, when residents awoke to the distinct smell of something burning. According to meteorologists with Environment Canada, the smoke is from a wildfire in the Province of Nova Scotia, where some 23,000 hectares of woodland (around 57,000 acres) have been burning in an out-of-control fire that started last weekend.

A Water Mill man was charged with felony driving while intoxicated Sunday afternoon. Police said his 5-year-old niece was asleep in the back seat of the car at the time of the traffic stop.

Late Saturday night or early Sunday, at a house on Clinton Street in Springs, vandals spray-painted the front door, a mailbox, and multiple cars with pink paint. A resident reported hearing “loud exhaust, possibly a dirt bike” around midnight.

What was reported to police dispatchers as a "smoldering battery" in a battery substation in East Hampton early Wednesday morning resulted in road closures and halted train service.

About 70 firefighters from seven departments battled a massive house fire on Sunday afternoon at 38 Farmstead Lane in Water Mill. One firefighter was treated at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital for heat exhaustion, and was released a short while later.

Maison Close Montauk on East Lake Drive, which had a grand-opening celebration planned this weekend, was completely ravaged by flames.

For the first time in over three years, Sag Harbor Village police assisted the State Police Department’s commercial vehicle enforcement unit with an inspection checkpoint in the village.

A Riverhead man is facing drunken driving charges for the third time in 10 years, making his latest charge, levied by East Hampton Town police on May 7, a felony.

East Hampton Town and Village police reported three accidents involving injuries this week.

The fire marshal was summoned on the morning of May 16 when a 35-year-old woman got stuck in the elevator at a commercial building on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village. No problem. He turned the system off, then switched it on again. The elevator sprang to life, and the woman was able to exit safely.