Delancey St. death
A car struck an 82-year-old Lower East Side woman as she was crossing Delancey St. near Allen St. at 11 p.m. Wed., Jan. 30, police said. She was pronounced dead a short time later at Beth Israel Hospital.
Josephine Laplaca, who lived at 53 Delancey St. near Eldridge St., apparently walked into the path of a westbound SUV, police said. The driver stopped after the accident and was not charged, police said. The victim had been a resident of the neighborhood since her family moved there when she was 11 years old, according to a Daily News article.
Mugged in Soho
Peggy Kerry, sister of Sen. John Kerry, former Democratic presidential candidate and longtime Village resident, was set upon and robbed by an unknown mugger as she was leaving the Manhattan Ensemble Theater at 55 Mercer St. near Broome St. at 10:30 p.m. Wed., Jan. 30, police said. The thief came at her from behind, knocked her to the ground, took her handbag with $60 and credit cards and fled. She was treated for a cut scalp, according to a New York Post article.
Sales tax evasion
A Manhattan grand jury indicted the owner of a Chinatown restaurant last week on a second degree grand larceny charge for stealing $763,650 in state and city sales tax over a seven-year period ending Dec. 20, 2007.
The defendant, Kwok Ming Chan, 57, owner of Cantoon Garden, 22 Elizabeth St., and partner in New Pearl River, the predecessor restaurant at the same address, hired people to create fake records showing sales records to back up underreported sales tax returns, according to District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
Search warrants executed at restaurant and the defendant’s home in Fresh Meadows, Queens, recovered the real and fake records as well as cash register tapes and guest checks, Morgenthau said. The total tax liability with fraud penalties and accrued interest through the end of this month is more than $1.9 million, the D.A. said.
Bail was set at $250,000 pending a Feb. 20 court appearance. If convicted, Chan is subject to a prison term of up to 15 years.
Hip-hop plea deal
Busta Rhymes, 35, the hip hop performer whose real name is Trevor Smith, pleaded guilty on Jan. 23, just before he was to stand trial on two assault charges, one in Chelsea and the other in Lower Manhattan.
The plea bargain calls for a sentence of three years probation and 10 days of community service to be imposed on March 18. Smith was arrested in August of last year for assaulting a man who accidentally spit on his car parked on Sixth Ave. at W. 19th St. and he was arrested in December 2006 for assaulting his chauffeur during an argument on W. Broadway at Chambers St. over back pay. He also agreed to pay a $1,510 fine for driving while intoxicated and with a suspended license on Broadway and Warren St. on Feb. 22, last year.
The rapper, who has appeared in films including “Shaft” and “Finding Forrester,” had a 1999 conviction and probation sentence for gun possession.
Fed suit
The mother of Imette St. Guillen, the John Jay student murdered two years ago after leaving a Soho bar, is suing the U.S. Probation Service for negligence for failing to supervise Darryl Littlejohn, charged with killing St. Guillen, while he was on probation.
Maureen St. Guillen is seeking $200 million damages charging that the federal service did not follow Littlejohn after his release from a state prison where he had been serving concurrent state and federal sentences for bank robbery. Littlejohn was working, in violation of his probation, as a bouncer at The Falls, the Lafayette St. bar where Imette was last seen alive.
— Albert Amateau
