Police & Courts

A woman out for a walk found the body of a Middle Island man in front of a house on Industrial Road near Navy Road in Montauk on the morning of Jan. 21, East Hampton Town police said this week.

On Jan. 8, someone called the Suffolk County CrimeStoppers line alleging the “illegal dumping of records” off the trustee road at Barcelona Point. An officer went to investigate that afternoon, but “was unable to check all of the access roads in the area before it got too dark,” according to the report.

On Monday, four and a half years after her arrest, Tenia Campbell of Medford was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for suffocating her twin 2-year-old daughters to death. She was arrested a few miles west of Montauk Point on June 27, 2019, after a search involving multiple police jurisdictions.

Peter Aviles — sought by police for the last 13 months in connection with a million-dollar heist that happened in Sag Harbor on Sept. 25, 2022 — was charged with burglary in the second degree, a class C violent felony this week.

A 15-year-old boy from East Hampton was safely reunited with his family on Monday, almost five days after he had been reported missing.

On Jan. 11, at the Mobil gas station on Main Street, passers-by noticed what turned out to be “fire suppression materials” sprayed all over the pavement there. An employee told police that his jacket had “got caught on an extinguisher pin” the night before, which apparently “activated the system in error.”

East Hampton Town announced on Friday the ratification of contracts with its Police Benevolent Association and the Superior Officers Association, including amendments focusing on wages, revised shift calculations, the addition of Juneteenth as a recognized holiday, field training compensation, equipment and technology implementation, and a revised work schedule.

East Hampton Town police arrested a 55-year-old East Hampton man early Sunday morning on drunken-driving charges, which were elevated to the felony level because of a previous D.W.I. conviction within the past 10 years.

Update: An East Hampton teen reported missing last Wednesday has been located and is on his way back home to be reunited with his family.

A police chase just before 1 a.m. Monday ended with a car full of teenagers crashing into the Hedges Inn in East Hampton. No one was seriously injured, but the car was so deeply embedded in the inn that the village building inspector was called to the site because the police were concerned that extracting the car could cause the front of the inn to collapse.

Following a road rage incident Saturday morning, a 28-year-old East Hampton woman reported that two middle-aged men in a Jeep had followed her into the long-term parking lot on Lumber Lane and confronted her. “If you’re going to give us the finger, we will teach you a lesson,” the men reportedly told the woman, before slamming her door shut. Police responded but were unable to locate a vehicle with two men matching her description.

The owner of a popular water recreation business was killed while riding his skateboard on Middle Line Highway in Noyac on Friday evening.

The Jewish Center of the Hamptons received an anonymous bomb threat via email on Dec. 24 stating that a group called “Funning” had placed explosives inside the synagogue and also inside every synagogue in New York State. The threat was reported to police two days later. It was ultimately deemed non-credible, but police remained on site for some time that day.

A 39-year-old Flanders man died Wednesday night after a car crash on Montauk Highway near the Bridgehampton Commons.

Town and village police charged two men with felonies in recent days following separate incidents, one at a house in East Hampton and another in the Reutershan Parking Lot.

Officers were called to check on the well-being of a youth running barefoot through the Reutershan Parking Lot on the evening of Dec. 19. Police couldn’t find anyone matching that description.

Robin Murphy was elected Dec. 12 to the office of fire commissioner in the Bridgehampton Fire District. Voters also overwhelmingly approved changes to the Length of Service Award Program.

A 35-year-old resident of Flower Hill, a small village in Nassau County, was seen starting a fire and then cleaning up ash behind the power station off Old Stone Highway in Springs on the afternoon of Dec. 11. A police officer ticketed him for an illegal “open burn.”

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Dec. 9, on Abraham’s Path near Asa’s Path in Amagansett, a town police officer pulled over a black 2011 BMW with temporary Alabama license plates and “an exhaust system that was modified to amplify sound.” It resulted in felony D.W.I. charges, one of two such incidents here in recent days.

A woman was found sleeping in her car on Washington Street in Sag Harbor at 4 a.m. on Friday. She told an officer she’d had too much to drink at Murf’s Tavern and had intended to sleep only for a few hours before driving home.

Tenia Campbell, accused of smothering her twin daughters and leading police from multiple jurisdictions on a search spanning 40 miles from Medford to Montauk in June 2019, pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of first-degree murder, a class A violent felony.

Sarah Maslin Nir, an author and New York Times journalist who has been nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize, has filed suit in New York State Supreme Court against a former Stephen Talkhouse bouncer, claiming he raped her on a beach in Springs in 2001 when she was 18 years old and he 31.

Southampton Town police have arrested two alleged shoplifters and two alleged accomplices who they say ran off with about $1,500 in merchandise from T.J. Maxx in Bridgehampton on the afternoon of Nov. 30.

Voters in fire districts across the South Fork can head to the polls Tuesday to elect commissioners who will oversee budgets, provide equipment, maintain facilities and trucks, and support training for volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians. The only contested race locally is in Bridgehampton.

A blue Mazda pickup truck belonging to a 25-year-old Texas woman got stuck on Navy Beach in Montauk on the evening of Nov. 29. Two officers were able to push the vehicle to safety. The woman left the beach that night with an East Hampton Town-style souvenir: a ticket for lacking a beach-driving permit.

Suffolk County and East Hampton Town law enforcement agencies are seeking help from the public in identifying two men suspected of burglarizing Kenny’s Castaways, a Montauk bar and restaurant, on Nov. 9.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney on Tuesday announced the arrest of a Montauk man said to be responsible for spray-painting swastikas and antisemitic phrases in the hamlet on Oct. 30 and Nov. 11.

The Sag Harbor Village Board, on Monday, formally served the village’s police chief, Austin J. McGuire, who had been suspended on Friday, with charges including misconduct, incompetence, and insubordination.

A man with sex crime charges pending in North Carolina was taken into custody at the commercial fishing dock off West Lake Drive in Montauk on Nov. 17.

East Hampton Village police were called to a village-owned building at Two Mile Hollow Beach on the morning of Nov. 18 when it was discovered that a toilet had been used but not flushed, and in fact could not be flushed because the water had been turned off for the winter.