Police & Courts

A ninth grader who stole a live snake from an East Hampton High School science classroom last week — and then posted about it on the video-sharing app TikTok — was apparently inspired to do so by a viral trend dubbed "devious licks."

Car crashes on local roads led to drunken-driving charges for two men this week.

Concerned for the safety of the ducks and fish at Hook Pond, a 29-year-old East Hampton woman called police to report a man fishing there on the afternoon of Sept. 8.

Two drivers who police say were caught speeding last week wound up charged with drunken driving.

A homeless woman who made her way past a fence on Further Lane in East Hampton was arrested on Sept. 7, charged with third-degree criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor.

A 9-year-old boy riding a bike on the Circle near Main Street in East Hampton Saturday afternoon suffered a minor elbow injury after being struck by a pickup truck that stopped briefly but did not remain at the scene.

A first-time visitor to the East Hampton Airport had trouble landing his single-engine plane last Friday afternoon, crashing it through a security fence and onto Daniel's Hole Road.

On the night of the deadly accident, just after sunset, Lisa Rooney left a bar and was driving home in her Chevrolet pickup truck on Flamingo Road in Montauk when she swerved and struck John James Usma-Quintero. Following a guilty plea in March, Ms. Rooney was sentenced on Thursday to jail time for her actions.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, made an indelible mark on New York City and the rest of the United States, which mourned 2,977 victims of terrorism that day. Some of East Hampton's first responders paused this week to reflect on the impact the terrorist attacks had on them personally.

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.