Police & Courts

Heading into New York City to assist the New York Police Department in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with an East Hampton Town and Village emergency service unit team, it was all quite surreal, from the quiet almost empty roadways on the drive in to the moment we crested an elevated portion of the Long Island Expressway in Queens where you would normally see the Twin Towers on the skyline, but instead there was just this cloud of dust hanging in the air where the towers used to stand.

At 1:20 a.m. last Thursday, police were called to a house on Oakview Highway in East Hampton, where a dispute was said to be in progress. An officer reported seeing an "arm in the window opening" of the bathroom, which proved to belong to Kevin Llivisaca-Pulgarin, 23, who lives farther down the road, and who, police said, had ripped out the bathroom screen and shattered the window with his fist.

Early Saturday morning, village police received a call from a 43-year-old man staying in a house on Hither Lane who needed help unlocking a second-floor bathroom door. He told police his young daughter had locked the door from the inside and couldn't get out. An officer was able to access the bathroom from the roof, dismantle the lock, and free the child.

Amid a season of intense traffic on town and village roads, at least six accidents last week involved the bane of local drivers' existence: left-hand turns.

The East Hampton Fire Department has named its top members and officers of 2020, among them former chief Raymond Harden and Mike Lia, the department chaplain, who were named Firefighters of the Year for a CPR save of a man who was in cardiac arrest.

Nia Dawson said she was in "big-sister mode" on Saturday, wanting to protect her 11-year-old brother, when a conflict erupted over who would get to sit on a bench in front of the Sag Harbor Launderette — she and her brother, who were there first eating frozen yogurt, or the owner of the launderette, where she was washing her clothes.

A toxic blue-green algal bloom prompted the East Hampton Town Trustees to close Georgica Pond to swimming and shellfishing in mid-August, but signs warning that crabbing is currently prohibited haven't stopped several people from trying.

When Devesh Samtani, 18, died last month after a hit-and-run in Amagansett, "it was not one who died," said his uncle Jay Kurani about the ripple effect of the accident. "Life will never be the same for anyone in our family, not the young ones or the old ones."

East Hampton Town police handed out several misdemeanor charges in the last week, including alleged reckless endangerment, driving while intoxicated, and criminal possession of drugs.

Summer in Montauk wouldn't be complete without a Craigslist scam involving a house rental.

A 64-year-old Bronxville, N.Y., man was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital after being thrown from his Vespa scooter last week at a bend of Ocean View Road near Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett.

He was having a panic attack and didn't know what to do, Daniel Campbell wrote in a seven-page statement to police a few hours after he struck Devesh Samtani, 18, of Hong Kong, while driving on a dark but crowded road in Amagansett to drop off his sister and her friends at a huge house party on Aug. 10. Mr. Campbell said he had not consumed alcohol or drugs, which police confirmed while interviewing him at his family's house on Second House Road in Montauk.

Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice John B. Collins ordered a more detailed investigation last Thursday of the Jan. 13 hit-and-run accident that killed Yuris Murillo Cruz, who was walking with her children on Montauk Highway in Amagansett when Mark A. Corrado Jr. of West Babylon, driving a borrowed pickup truck, struck them and fled the scene.

The spray paint was intentional, an employee at Harper's Books told police on Friday afternoon, after a traffic control officer called in what at first looked like graffiti on the plywood boards that were installed over the building's windows by way of storm preparation.

A hit-and-run incident on Collins Avenue in East Hampton, a short street that connects Accabonac Road to North Main Street, was reported shortly after 3 p.m. on Aug. 18.

An East Hampton man was charged after crashing his 2007 Toyota pickup truck, which was heavily damaged, on Abraham's Path near Town Lane in Amagansett at 10:05 p.m. He told police he'd dropped some food he was eating, causing him to lose control of the truck and strike a tree and a fence.

A 40-year-old East Hampton man is facing multiple charges stemming from a Friday night incident that was witnessed by two children.

There was cause for concern on Egypt Beach near the Maidstone Club on Monday afternoon when a beachgoer realized that a swimmer had been gone for more than 45 minutes and was no longer in sight. As it turned out, the man was not in distress but an experienced ocean swimmer who goes in almost every day. Still, what followed put recent interagency training to the test and, said Drew Smith, Chief of East Hampton Village Lifeguards, was "a huge success." 

Two men were charged over the weekend with drunken driving on local roads.

The teenage victim of an Aug. 10 hit-and-run in Amagansett died on Friday from head injuries sustained in the accident. 

On the afternoon of Aug. 9, "an  unknown subject moved a small outside table from the backyard to the front stoop" of a Dunemere Lane house and "dumped a small garbage bag of seashells on the stoop as well," according to the police report.

At 5 a.m. on Saturday, East Hampton Town police charged Nelson Pardo of Port Jefferson, 41, with criminal trespassing. The charge is a misdemeanor when a person tries to enter a fenced-off property, in this case a garage on Long Lane, East Hampton. He was arraigned here the next morning before Justice Steven Tekulsky. 

South Fork police are on alert after eight overdoses linked to the same batch of fentanyl-laced cocaine resulted in six deaths on Shelter Island and in Southold last week.

A teenage driver who reportedly fled the scene of an accident late Tuesday night that left a pedestrian with serious injuries was arrested a few hours later, at 2:40 a.m. yesterday, at his home in Montauk.

Too many cars are not reacting to silent blue or green flashing lights in fire and ambulance volunteers' vehicles the same way they would to a siren, said East Hampton Fire Department Chief Gerard Turza, and this summer is worse than ever, because, he suggested, the pandemic has attracted more people unfamiliar with how local emergency services operate.

A 78-year-old woman who lives on King's Point Road in Springs was arrested on Aug. 3, charged with menacing with a weapon and criminal mischief with intent to cause injury, misdemeanors. 

Four recent accidents on local roads ended in charges of driving while intoxicated against all four motorists, according to East Hampton Town police.

A few more details have emerged regarding an accident reported here last week, in which Paul Brennan of Sagaponack had to be extracted from his 2020 Land Rover after a near head-on collision on Stephen Hand's Path near Two Holes of Water Road, East Hampton.

A handwritten note showed up in an Orchard Lane resident's mailbox on July 29 saying that her pool pump was broken, that it was very loud, and requesting that she turn it off. The next day an unknown person entered her backyard and unplugged the pump. A repair company was to have arrived last week.

Drugs were allegedly involved in at least two arrests last week.