The Bronx Ink

A man in the Bronx uses recycled materials to harvest the sun’s energy.

By Ethan Frogget

The body of a 400-pound man was found stuffed in a duffel bag inside an apartment in a Bronx housing project Saturday, sources told the Daily News.

Patrol officers responding to a different incident at the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses in Soundview caught a whiff of a foul odor coming from another apartment, the sources said.

The cops located a son of the resident, who was not immediately identified, to let them inside the sixth-floor apartment on Bruckner Blvd., sources said.

The door opened to a gruesome scene: blood covered the kitchen floor, cleaning products were strewn about the room and a bloody hatchet was lying nearby, sources said.

Cops also spotted a large duffel bag, drenched in blood, in a kitchen closet, sources said.

“It’s soaked,” a police source said. “It’s a river of blood coming from the bag, at least 8 pints.”

Crime scene detectives and workers from the city’s medical examiner’s office were still working inside the apartment last night.

Although the identity of the body had not yet been determined, many residents were shocked that it could be their heavyset neighbor. [Daily News]

New York City expects to collect $575 million in 2011 from parking ticket fines. You don’t like it, you can fight. You can come here to a parking violations office and see a judge, or you can “settle” and get discount.

Fox 5 News showed how, within a few minutes, a man with a $65 ticket paid only $43 through the settlement program.

But the days of getting breaks are numbered. Sources tell Fox 5 News that the settlement program is about to end.

Parking violation judges say that their bosses, senior judges, told them that the discount program will be eliminated sometime in mid-April. And they also say they were warned not to tell the public. [my FOX NY]

The police shot and killed a 48-year-old man when he attacked them with a six-inch steak knife in an apartment in the Bronx on Sunday night, the authorities said. The man, Paul Goldreyer, first attacked his roommate with a knife, then lunged at officers who responded to a 911 call, the police said.

The police offered the following account: Mr. Goldreyer’s roommate called 911 around 11:20 p.m. and said Mr. Goldreyer was attacking him; the operator heard him telling the man to get back.

Two officers from the 49th Precinct soon arrived at the apartment on the fifth floor of 1545 Rhinelander Avenue, near Jacobi Medical Center, to find the roommate trying to fend off Mr. Goldreyer with a barstool.

“He’s sort of like a lion tamer, keeping his roommate at bay,” said Paul W. Browne, the chief police spokesman.

Four other officers from the same precinct arrived on the scene at some point. The police safely got the roommate out of the apartment.

The first two officers, in uniform, confronted Mr. Goldreyer from the hallway just outside the front door; he was inside the apartment. Civilian earwitnesses in the building say they heard the officers say “drop the knife” repeatedly. Mr. Goldreyer did not. Instead, he rushed toward them with it.

A male officer fired twice at Mr. Goldreyer. A female officer fired once. All three shots hit him — in the chest, abdomen and left side.

Mr. Goldreyer, who was unemployed, has 16 prior arrests on charges including resisting arrest, drug possession and criminal trespass, the police said. His roommate, who is 36, said that Mr. Goldreyer had accused him of sleeping with Mr. Goldreyer’s female companion. The men had lived together for only a few weeks.

No officers or other civilians were injured, the police said. [New York Times]

A Bronx pastor charged with raping a 12-year-old girl from his flock turned down a “sweetheart” plea deal that came with three years in prison.

Michael Clare, 38, refused the offer from prosecutors, despite “almost irrefutable proof” he impregnated the child, said Bronx Supreme Court Justice Megan Tallmer.

“He wasn’t interested,” Tallmer said in court Monday.

Clare’s lawyer, Paul Brenner, asked the judge to consider probation instead of prison.

“I would never do that,” she snapped, citing a DNA match between Clare and the victim’s aborted fetus.

Clare – the married leader of the Harvest Worship Center and principal of the associated Harvest Prep school, declined comment outside court.

Authorities learned of the alleged crimes in June, when the girl, who now 15, told her parents and police that Clare had sexually preyed on her for three years. [Daily News]

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s statewide crackdown on tour bus safety pulled more than three dozen buses and drivers off the road this past weekend.

Here in the city, officials say State Department of Transportation investigators put 16 of 26 buses out of service over a three day period.

The buses were stopped at a Manhattan checkpoint and shut down for vehicle or driver violations or both.

Outside the city, violations were found in 25 of 138 tour bus inspections.

The crackdown comes in the wake of a deadly bus crash earlier this month.

Fifteen people were killed when a tour bus overturned and slammed into a pole on the New England Thruway in the Bronx. [NY1]

By Ethan Frogget and Clara Martinez

Every Friday, a group of seniors gets together in the Bronx Library Center to bowl with the Nintendo Wii. The program is part of a citywide initiative launched by the New York Public Library system to bring new technologies to surrounding communities. Wii gaming is available in five other Bronx libraries and twelve centers in Manhattan and Staten Island.

Two subway stations on the Bronx IRT No. 6 line are slated to close this Monday for eight months of repairs and renovations.

It’s going to be bad,” office cleaner Marta Siguenza, 56, said Monday at the Elder Ave. station, where she catches the train to Manhattan.

“Eight months is too long.”

The MTA New York City Transit is shutting down the Elder Ave. and St. Lawrence Ave. stations in the final phase of an $89 million rehabilitation project at five stations on the Westchester Ave. elevated line.

The Morrison Ave.-Soundview and Whitlock Ave. stations recently reopened after months of rehabilitation work.

[NY Daily News]