The Bronx Ink

The search continues for a man who shot two people more than a week ago in Highbridge, NY1 reports. Police released a surveillance video showing a man they say opened fire repeatedly in the early hours on Oct. 30. The man shot and wounded a 32-year-old woman on Walter Avenue and a bouncer at a bar on West Mount Eden Parkway.

Four months ago, Bronx resident Maria Rosenda was robbed while visiting the Dominican Republic. The assailants followed her from the airport to her mother’s house in Bajos de Haina, jumping her as soon as she reached the front door.

Rosenda, who moved to the U.S. in 1988, said the mugging was typical of today’s Dominican Republic, a place so dangerous that “you can’t even walk safely in the streets.”

For Rosenda, the electoral coordinator for the Dominican Revolutionary Party in the Bronx, the way to change that is through politics. She is one of dozens of volunteers working to get Dominicans registered to vote in next year’s Dominican national elections. In the past few months, they have helped nearly 8,000 Bronx residents sign up.

While Dominicans abroad have been able to vote for the Dominican president since 2000, this time they will also vote for legislators stationed overseas. The Bronx, home to New York’s largest Dominican population, will have a big say in who wins.

About 150,000 Dominican-born residents, along with their children, live in the Bronx. Rosenda, who returns home several times a year to participate in local politics, is working to make sure each and every one is ready to vote next May.

The special education teacher has been going nonstop for months. When school let out last June, she took just four days off from work and spent the rest of the summer working at the campaign office from 9 a.m. until past midnight seven days a week.

Sitting in the campaign office in Mount Hope, Rosenda and other volunteers spend their evenings entering voter information into a database. The long hours bring them close together, said Elida Martinez, another volunteer.

“It’s like a big family here,” Martinez said.

The Bronx campaign office is unusual in that almost all of the volunteers are women. Martinez said they are all driven by concern for those back home.

“We have family over there, you know,” the 46-year-old homemaker said. “Before, we would send $100 over and that did something. Now, $100 is nothing.”

The overseas legislators will give Dominicans abroad a bigger voice back home. The legislators will represent three areas outside of Dominican borders: the northern United States and Canada, the southern United States down to the Caribbean and Europe.

Twenty-three people are running for the three available U.S. and Canada spots.

Seven of the 23 live in the Bronx. Arsenio Devares, a teacher of 20 years, is one them.

Devares’s brothers and sisters have all moved to the U.S., but the Morris Heights resident still has one foot back home.

“That’s one of the most important things for Dominican people,” said Devares, who teaches at PS 17X in Morrisania. “They always think about going back.”

Devares said the typical Dominican ideal is to retire back in the Caribbean. “We work hard over here to buy houses back there.”
Mount Eden resident Julian Melendez is one of Devares’ competitors. Melendez, a businessman and lawyer who has lived in New York for 14 years, worked at the Dominican consulate in New York for four years and saw the problems Dominicans face.

“I went to jail many times to visit Dominicans awaiting deportation.”

It will be several weeks before the party nominates its legislative candidates. In the meantime, everyone is still working to register voters, and there are many long nights ahead.

“We drink a lot of coffee here,” Martinez said as another volunteer arrived with the evening’s supply.

Some 6,000 cyclists biked the Bronx on Oct. 23. Bike enthusiasts young and old took over the streets from Bronx County Courthouse to the Sheridan Expressway and Pelham Bay Park.

Three alleged gang members face trial in Bronx Supreme Court for a series of drug crimes in Castle Hill. (CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN, Bronx Ink)

Jury selection continued yesterday for the latest round of a murder and conspiracy case in which prosecutors indicted 25 defendants for a series of crimes related to the crack cocaine trade in the South Bronx.

Kalieh McMorris, 23, and two brothers, Khalil Harris, 29 and Shariff Harris, 26, were among the few defendants who did not plead guilty. The three defendants face charges of conspiracy, assault, robbery and murder in Bronx Supreme Court.

The court is expected to hear testimony from more than a dozen witnesses in the trial that could last well into December. The prosecution plans to present transcripts from tapped telephone conversations as well as DNA and fingerprint evidence related to the murder of Russell Allen, 24, an alleged drug dealer.

Twenty of the original twenty-five defendants pleaded guilty and received sentences ranging from a year in jail to 10 to 20 years in prison. McMorris and the Harris brothers pleaded innocent and face at least 15 years in prison if convicted of the top charges against them for conspiracy.

Assistant District Attorney Adam Oustatcher said the crimes covered in the indictment began in February 2006, when McMorris allegedly shot two drug dealers at Castle Hill Houses, the same location where Allen was shot dead two years later.

Allen’s relatives were in attendance during the jury selection. His cousin, Ashley Jones, said she came to seek justice for her family.

“They killed my cousin,” Jones said. “We lost a family member and he’s never going to come back.”

McMorris is charged with murder, robbery, assault, conspiring to sell crack cocaine, and using teens under the age of 16 to assist him. Shariff Harris faces robbery, burglary and assault.

McMorris’ attorney Cesar Gonzalez said his client should be tried separately from the other defendants, as guilty verdicts against the Harris brothers, who are not charged with murder, might sway the jury on the additional charge against McMorris.

“What happens when you knock down one domino?” Gonzalez asked.

McMorris’ father, Jude Leon McMorris, said yesterday outside the courtroom that his son was not a murderer and that the DNA and fingerprints would prove that.

“He is a good kid,” said Father McMorris, a chaplain at Rikers Island. “He was going to school and doing the right thing. He wasn’t in any gangs.”

Father McMorris said his son hadn’t always listened to his parents, but that he had “made peace with God” during the three years he’s spent awaiting trial at Rikers Island, and was well respected there by inmates and guards alike.

“He’s been planting the seed that gang life is not the right path to take,” Father McMorris said.

The case against McMorris and the Harris brothers stems from a six-month wiretapping operation during which 24 lines were tapped and 140,000 phone calls were intercepted.

Two more defendants, including a third Harris brother, 28-year-old Hassan, are also awaiting trial.

With additional reporting by Steven Graboski

Carlos Mendez marinades beef and cactus for a barbecue at Wanaqua Garden. (CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN/Bronx Ink)

“There was nothing here — nothing,” said Luis Rosario, 74, gesturing around his Mott Haven plot of land. The verdant vegetable patches of what is now Wanaqua  Garden are dotted with cheerful sunflowers.

Ten years ago the empty lot was teeming with trash. Residents used it as a fee-free garbage dump. Then the Department of Parks put up a sign by the plot on East 136^th Street, welcoming neighbors to use it for gardening. Rosario gathered a group of friends and set to excavating it.

“It took us more than a year,” said Rosario, one of a handful of gardeners that has stuck with Wanaqua from the start. In the decade since, gardeners have come and gone — some who just wanted to try their hand at gardening, and others who stayed longer.

For greenhorns and gardeners alike, though, this 10,000 square-foot lot is a place to gather, make friends, and feel part of a community. Neighbors pop in to pick up fresh vegetables free of charge, and dozens of children troop in a few days a week to care for the vegetable patches their elementary schools have adopted.

But the long-time gardeners of Wanaqua are the heart of the community. On a recent Saturday afternoon, Rosario, who is Puerto Rican, combed through the tomato bushes looking for ingredients for a salad, while his friend Carlos Mendez, who has also gardened here for years, marinaded beef in herbs and beer for a barbeque. Soon, Mendez’s nephew would arrive for lunch. In the meantime, Rosario invited two passersby to join them — a father and daughter whom he had never met.

Even after a decade, Rosario said the garden, with its rows of beans, yams, pumpkins, and herbs like cilantro and papalo, still attracts new faces. And for Rosario and Mendez, it is a second home. The two old friends visit the garden seven days a week and say even the winter doesn’t put them off.

“It’s a beautiful garden,” said Mendez, 70, who hails from Mexico and has lived in the US for 37 years. “It feels like being in my country in the mountains.”

“It’s perfect,” he said. “Like today, we’ll grill some meat and enjoy a calm afternoon.”

The garden may offer respite on some days, but just as often, it’s alive with dozens of schoolchildren from neighboring Public School 43 and Mott Haven Academy Charter School, harvesting swiss chard and squealing at the sight of bumblebees.

Each school cares for a sizable section of the garden, where the elevated flowerbeds are living, breathing science labs, and the children can follow food from the seeds they plant to the salads on their lunch table.

Candace Williams, a science teacher at Mott Haven Academy, said announcing that it’s time to go the garden is a surefire way to liven the classroom. “The students are super excited. So excited that sometimes it’s a challenge to get them outside,” she said.

Fourth-grade teacher Peter Kalkau’s students at P.S. 43 have learned to test the pH of soil and replenish the nutrients in it with compost, and students at both schools have harvested vegetables for salads and other dishes.

That’s a good recipe for getting kids to try new things.

“Those are the vegetables they planted, so they want to know how they taste,” Kalkau said.

Starting this year, some students at P.S. 43 will have reading classes in the garden, too, following the addition of a garden house this month where the kids can sit outdoors in the shade. The garden house, courtesy of the nonprofit GrowNYC and corporate donors, replaced a dilapidated shed and gives the gardeners much needed storage space.

Even better, it gives them water. Palette Architects, the Brooklyn-based architecture firm that designed the garden house pro bono, created a roof that feeds rainwater into a 1,000-gallon barrel that should fill up in just a few weeks’ time.

For the gardeners, it’s a huge convenience: They had previously been fetching water from a pump on the street.

“It’s great,” Rosario said, admiring the garden house that seems to reward years of hard work on the garden.

He continued searching for tomatoes and soon had a bagful. The garden produces more than the gardeners and their families can eat, but nothing goes to waste.

“I give it away,” Rosario said. “If someone needs it, I give it.”

Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying the man who assaulted Jose Rodriguez (above) last Thursday afternoon. (Photo by Ted Regencia)

An 81-year-old Parkchester resident was knocked down and punched inside the front door of his apartment building Thursday afternoon by a young male assailant who tore off the senior’s jewelry and emptied his pockets of cash.

Police released security video footage from the building at 1555 Unionport Road that showed the attack lasted less than a minute. The elderly victim, Jose Rodriguez, sustained minor injuries, including multiple bruises.

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The footage shows Rodriguez, who was returning home at around 4 p.m., opening the door to his building, when a man wearing a towel draped over his head grabs him from behind.

The mugger then held Rodriguez in a chokehold and shoved him into the lobby, where he began hitting him in the face. Once Rodriguez fell to the floor, the teen tore the towel from his head and continued beating and kicking.

Rodriguez, who has dark bruises on his face from the attack, said he has lived in Parkchester for 35 years, and this was the first time he had been assaulted.

“I don’t feel safe,” said Rodriguez, who was born in Puerto Rico. “You don’t feel safe in any part of the world.” Rodriguez said he did not get a good look at his attacker. His younger sister, Luisa Rodriguez, said she was saddened by the incident.

Other neighbors commented that the area had become dangerous only recently. Police report that over the past two years, robberies in Precinct 43, which includes Parkchester, have risen 3.3 percent.

“I’ve seen all kinds of stuff happening in the last couple years,” said Ronald Smith, 69, a retired social worker. “I’ve been here eight years and it’s getting worse and worse.”

Smith said security in the area was not enough. “I’m checking when I go out at night to see who’s behind me,” he said. “I’m checking to see who’s on the elevator with me. You learn to be cautious. These little incidents make you that way.”

In August, a 64-year-old man was assaulted and mugged by three assailants while entering his building in Fordham Heights, 3 miles away.

Police are asking anyone with information about Rodriguez’s attacker, who they believe is in his late teens, to report to the website nypdcrimestoppers.com. All tips are anonymous.