Arrest in Village rape
Police at the Sixth Precinct arrested Robert Thorgrimson, 25, and charged him with the first-degree rape of a woman, 19, in the hallway of her Village apartment house at 2 a.m. Sun Oct. 29. Law enforcement officials described the suspect as being 6 feet 2 inches tall, and a neighbor of the victim in the building on West 12th Street near West Fourth Street. He was being held without bail pending a Jan. 19 court date.
Tried the ice cream
A man who bought ice cream at the Haagen Dazs shop at 33 Barrow Street on Friday night Oct. 28 returned shortly before midnight, pulled what appeared to be a silver handgun and demanded, “Give me the [expletive] money,” police said. The robber, described as a black man in his 40s with a black beard, wearing a black jacket and black trousers and weighing about 200 pounds, then tried to open the cash register with his free hand, but fled when it wouldn’t open, police said.
Chelsea stabbing
Police from the 10th Precinct arrested two men and charged them with first-degree assault in connection with the stabbing of a 24-year-old victim near the corner of Ninth Avenue and 22nd Street during the early hours of Sat., Oct. 29. The two suspects, David Dobbins, 25 of Brooklyn, and Aundre Ellison, 25, of Queens, were with three other men, all of whom were arguing with the victim at 3:20 a.m., police said. The victim was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in serious condition.
Hip-hop happenings
A hit-and-run incident on Aug. 27, 2004, in which Ayesha Ouattara, a friend of the hip-hop performer Foxy Brown, is charged with driving Brown’s Land Rover into two Critical Mass bikers, was deferred last week to a Dec. 28 court date.
One of the hit-and-run victims, Robert Herschenfeld, said last week that the Manhattan district attorney’s office had approached him about testifying before a grand jury about his claim that Brown was in the car at the time when Critical Mass riders in their monthly ride were biking in protest against the Republican National Convention. The district attorney’s office declined to confirm or deny a grand jury investigation.
Herschenfeld said that Brown got out of the car and yelled, “Get out of the way you dumb white faggots” when the cyclists were blocking the Land Rover’s passage on West Houston Street.
It was apparently a bad week for Brown, whose real name is Inga Marchand. She is also charged with punching two employees at Bloomie Nails, a nail salon on West 23rd Street near Eighth Avenue in Chelsea on the night of Aug. 29. Brown has rejected two misdemeanor plea deals that would have resulted in 10 days of community service. The case is still pending.
Brown’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said his client was not involved the hit-and-run incident. He also said Brown did not hit anyone at the nail salon.
Subway DOA
The medical examiner’s office is investigating the cause of death of a man found at 8:25 a.m. Mon. Oct. 31 on the platform of the F line subway station at East Broadway. The body of the victim, described only as a black man in his 50s, showed no signs of trauma, police said.
Robbery pattern
Police are looking for two suspects who robbed pedestrians at gunpoint on the street near Union Square and in Chelsea on Oct. 24 and Oct. 25, and also held up pedestrians at three locations in Forest Hills on the same two days.
One of the Manhattan robberies victimized a man, 58, at 4:10 a.m. Oct. 24 at the corner of East 16th Street and Union Square West. The other Manhattan robbery, of a 38-year-old-man, occurred at 4:25 a.m. Oct. 25 on West 18th Street just west of Fifth Avenue.
One of the suspects was described as a white man in his early 20s, 6 feet 1 inch tall with blond or reddish hair. The other was described as a black man, about 30, slightly taller than 5 feet and weighing more than 200 pounds.
The suspects may have had a white van parked in the vicinity of the robberies, police said.
Bowery bar slay arrest
Police arrested Michael Brown on Oct. 25 in connection with the Sept. 21 shooting death of Thomas McKinney, 24, after an argument at Mission Bar and Lounge on Bowery at Rivington Street. Brown, who had a previous arrest for gun possession, was apprehended at a friend’s apartment in Williamsburg and admitted to police that he shot McKinney in the street after an argument over a spilled drink, police said. A homeless man, Jeffrey Dudley, 49, who was lying on the sidewalk on the Bowery at the time, was also wounded in the ankle in the shooting. The argument over the spilled drink involved four women who were with the victim, who was on parole after a previous gun conviction, and Brown. McKinney lived nearby on Forsyth Street and worked at the Burkina hip-hop store on East Houston Street.
Halloween incidents
Police reported that the Sixth Precinct, covering Greenwich Village and Soho from Houston Street to 14th Street, generally saw a “safe night” during the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade on Sixth Avenue between Spring and West 23rd Streets. Yet that’s not to say the night was without incident.
Detective Mike Singer, a precinct community affairs officer, gave the report for incidents in the precinct from the lead up to the start of the parade, from around 6 p.m., to the time when the last stragglers finally called it a night, about 4 a.m.: there were 19 disorderly conduct summonses issued, eight summonses issues for criminal possession of marijuana, three assaults, two summonses for sale of a controlled substance, 220 summonses for open alcohol containers, three for underage drinking (by people at the parade), two summonses for public urination, three for noise (whether for bar noise or loud boom-box radios, it wasn’t clear, Singer said) and seven summonses issues to unlicensed food carts — police removed the carts.
Singer said more people stayed in the Village after the parade because of the weather. “It was a beautiful night out,” Singer said. “There were a lot of people down here. People stayed later than they normally would. It was a safe night for everyone.”
Later on, around, 12:40 a.m. on Tuesday morning, police forced a large crowd of people who had gathered on the street at Christopher and Greenwich Streets up onto the sidewalk so that auto traffic could flow through and so they wouldn’t get injured by cars, Singer said. Darleen Rubin, a resident on Christopher Street, told The Villager that a large crowd of 75 on the street looked like an unruly mob and seemed to be resisting police efforts to clear the street.
“I went out onto my balcony. There were huge groups of people fighting, pushing and a mob fever developing,” said Rubin. “The police swarmed in en masse to divide the crowds and with the aid of their cars with sirens wailing divided them. There were perhaps 75 or more police, many wearing Emergency Service Unit ID and they were on foot pushing the crowd to the west side of Christopher and Washington Streets where they reluctantly went.”
“We needed people to be up on the sidewalk — so the street was closed,” Singer said. “There are always some people that don’t want the party to end. People traditionally have headed to Christopher Street after the Halloween Parade.”
One resident, who requested anonymity, called to report that an officer was hurt and that his badge had been stolen. Singer said no officer was hurt. At first he said the badge may have gotten knocked off during “a tussle” but was recovered at the scene. Singer then called back to say the badge belonged to a plainclothes officer who later realized he had left it in his locker at the precinct stationhouse.
Albert Amateau and Lincoln Anderson
