Police & Courts

A fire Saturday morning in a Water Mill home owned by the publishing heiress Anne Hearst caused major damage to the 17,000-square-foot house, though Ms. Hearst and several family members escaped uninjured. Firefighters were able to rescue two cats and a substantial amount of artwork.    

The parents of a 15-year-old were arrested Friday night after East Hampton Village police found teenagers drinking at a house party at 26 The Circle.

The Southampton Town fire marshal investigating the cause said that between the size of the residence and the way it had been built, the fire proved difficult to put out, with pockets of flames popping up from behind walls well into the evening.

Rogue embers, still smoldering in a fireplace at an East Hampton house, erupted into flames in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Two accused murderers spent Christmas behind bars while their cases remained pending in Suffolk County Criminal Court in Riverhead.

A man arrested in October for allegedly forcing a woman he had just met to perform a sex act on him pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in East Hampton Town Justice Court, but will have to register as a sex offender.

Did someone lose a Christmas card? An envelope with a card inside and a $20 bill was found on Main Street Saturday afternoon and turned in to police. The card thanked “Ricky and the entire North Haven Village staff.” A Sag Harbor Village officer dropped it off at North Haven Village Hall.

Parks police are investigating a death in Montauk's Camp Hero State Park, believed to be a suicide, on the day before Christmas. 

The owner of Village Hardware in East Hampton was arrested Saturday on a child endangerment charge in an incident that police say happened in the store on Oct. 13.

East Hampton Village police arrested a 23-year-old woman who they said bounced two checks this fall and used an American Express credit card account that did not belong to her to pay for services at the Elegant Touch Nail Spa.     

East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky has dismissed two misdemeanor charges against Matthew Hunt, a 21-year-old would-be sailor from Arizona who ran his used sailboat onto a Montauk beach in September just two days after buying it on eBay.     

On one of the coldest days of the year, a fire broke out in a large house in Bridgehampton Thursday afternoon. 

Police were given a piece of litter with a man’s name on it at Main Beach on Friday afternoon. An officer contacted the man, who claimed that garbage must have fallen out accidentally when he opened his car door the night before. He picked up the litter from the officer.

Randy Hoffman, a dedicated volunteer who has responded to a few thousand calls over the course of his 12-year involvement with the emergency medical system on the South Fork, helping countless patients and in some instances literally saving their lives, now finds himself a patient in need.

Former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota and his top chief aide, Christopher McPartland, were found guilty Tuesday on felony charges related to their attempt to cover up the beating of a prisoner by the disgraced Suffolk police chief James Burke in 2012. 

The owner of Petit Bleu, a children’s store in East Hampton Village, who was cited by code enforcement last month for placing two stuffed golden retrievers, one adorned with a “welcome” sign, at the entrance to her shop, contested the summons in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Monday. 

David R. Kent, 39, of East Hampton was arrested on a drug charge on Dec. 4. During a search, East Hampton Town police said, they found a small baggie containing a white powdery substance that later tested positive for cocaine in the center console of his 1985 Chevrolet.

When a small bird, possibly a yellowtail warbler, was trapped under a Jeep whose driver stopped on Gingerbread Lane just before noon on Dec. 2, an East Hampton Fire Department chief who was driving down the street came to the rescue.

Commissioner elections were held in four fire districts that are in charge of fire and emergency medical services in East Hampton Town on Tuesday, but only one of them — Montauk — had a contested race. There, William Pitts was the winner in a field of three.

Lisa Rooney, who was charged with drunken driving after she struck and killed a bicyclist in Montauk in late October, had a blood-alcohol content of .13 more than three hours after the crash, a toxicology report has shown. The legal limit is .08.

Voters will go to the polls on Tuesday to elect fire district commissioners, whose job it is to oversee tax dollars spent on fire services, emergency medical care, and other duties.

Someone reported an erratic driver, possibly intoxicated, on Thanksgiving Day. The caller reported seeing two young women with a small child get into a gray Honda Pilot and speed off up Main Street to Newtown Lane at about 6:30 p.m.

A Springs man stands charged with drunken driving and reckless endangerment this week, accused of running into two people in their driveway on Sunday evening.

A fire broke out Friday night in an outbuilding at Marders, a garden shop and nursery in Bridgehampton. Smoke billowed out from the property, behind the Bridgehampton Commons, as firefighters worked to put out the blaze.

A man with two names, wanted after he failed to show up in Suffolk District Court five years ago to answer a drunken-driving charge, was arrested in East Hampton last week, charged once again with driving while intoxicated.

A woman charged with drunken driving in a fatal crash in Montauk on Halloween Eve was to have appeared in East Hampton Town Justice Court last Thursday, but the case has been adjourned — leaving the victim’s family and friends disheartened — because she is in an in-patient rehab program.

Several sections of picket fence at the South End Cemetery near the intersection of James Lane and Mill Road were found damaged at about 2:40 a.m. on Nov. 19.

Responding to community complaints, Sag Harbor Village police conducted an investigation into reports of alcoholic beverages being sold to minors at the Gulf Gas Station convenience store on Hampton Street.

Another swastika, the second one found recently in East Hampton Town, has turned up, but police did not call it  a hate crime and say the two incidents do not appear to be related. This one takes aim at Democrats.

A 25-year-old woman arrested early at about 1:15 a.m. on Friday on a drunken-driving charge in Sag Harbor Village kicked an officer and was taken for a mental health evaluation after she threatened to kill herself while in police custody.