The cigarettes and tax stamps were found by Tax Department investigators during searches of an apartment, two vehicles and a rented garage. Three of the men who were arrested; Khader Awawdeh, Hakim Al-Saydi, and Dhafer Ghaleb, were charged with first degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, attempt to evade tax, possession of counterfeit stamps and unlawful possession of untaxed cigarettes. The fourth man, Fahmi Hassan, was charged with first degree criminal possession of a forged instrument. Awawdeh, Al-Saydi, Hassan, and Ghaleb are next due to appear in court on June 17.

Brad Maione, a spokesman for the Department of Taxation and Finance, said, “The presumption was that they would probably attempt to sell them at some point, but we were able to interdict them and prevent that sale.” Maione said the men “likely” got the cigarettes from an Indian reservation upstate or on Long Island. Maione said reservations are “a significant source of untaxed cigarettes.”

Maione wouldn’t disclose how the stash of illegal smokes was discovered, but he did say that Tax Department agents do “regular surveillance around the Indian reservations in Long Island and upstate New York” to identify individuals who are “buying hundreds of cartons.”

No one picked up the phone at the addresses of Awadeh, Al-Saydi and Hassan. Ghaleb’s home address is a store called Grocery Westchester, at 1781 Westchester Ave. in the Bronx. A man who answered the phone at Grocery Westchester hung up when asked about the arrests.

Gladys Wright was lying in her bed on Sunday morning and could not fall asleep because she was waiting for her great-granddaughter, Quanisha, 16, to come home. Instead she got a phone call from Quanisha’s friend who told her that she had been shot at a birthday party in an apartment on Weeks Avenue, four blocks away from her apartment.

“I’m always praying. When you’re out there on the street, you never know if you’re gonna make it back home,” Wright, 86, said on Monday as she ate deli sandwiches for lunch with Quanisha’s brothers, Hassan, 13 and Trayquan, 14. Next to her sat Quanisha’s empty chair as a subtle painful sign of her loss.

Gladys Wright, 86, the great-grandmother of Quanisha Wright who was killed on Sunday morning at a birthday party sits in her apartment in mourning on Monday. (Delphine Reuter/ The Bronx Ink)

Quanisha who had just celebrated her 16^th birthday on Friday joined her friend Marvin Wiggins, 15, Saturday evening to celebrate his godson’s first birthday. They stayed after the party ended around 9 p.m. to help clean up then started an after-party with their friends.

“They wanted to have a little time” for themselves, said Eva Reed, the baby’s grandmother, who lives in the building where the party took place.

Around 1:15 a.m., said people who were present, two drunken men arrived at the party and opened fire. They were allegedly upset about a disagreement that took place earlier in the evening and were seeking revenge. Wiggins was shot when he threw himself between the shooters and Doreen Eleazer, Reed’s neighbor.

As panicked party-goers fled the scene, Reed said, Quanisha was shot in the stomach and ran toward the backdoor where she crouched down next to her friend Shonta Crosby. Both men ran out.

According to police,two men, Dexter “Lil Dex” Green, 20, and Robert “Jacob” Mitchell, 24, were arrested Monday and charged with murder in the shootings.

“They took something precious from me. She was my treasure,” Wright, who was Quanisha’s guardian, said of the shooters. “I want them to be punished.”

Monday morning, Hassan Wright, was sitting on his sister’s bed, reading the news of her death in the paper. He was at his aunt’s house when his sister was shot. He described her as “unique, smart and beautiful,” and said that he misses her.

Hassan Wright, 13, lays on his sister, Quanisha's bed the day after she was killed during a birthday party. (Dunia Kamal/The Bronx Ink)

Quanisha loved dancing and planned on improving her step-dancing skills with friends over next summer. “She was always there for everybody,” said Wright’s friend, Delores Shazeia Pinkston, 16.

Pinkston also knew Marvin Wiggins. She left a potato chip bag for him by the candle memorial set up at his building’s entrance. Friends and family hung a white T-shirt in the building’s entrance, on which they wrote condolences. Marvin and Quanisha went to the same school from sixth to eight grade, said Marvin’s mother, Andrea Wiggins.

On Monday afternoon, Wiggins’ apartment was filled with family and friends in mourning. They watched the news on television hoping they could learn more about the crime.

“Marvin was a loving child. He didn’t want anybody being hurt and now he’s gone,” she said before shouting and wailing in anguish.

When Andrea called the police, to ask about the suspects, she was pleased to hear that an arrest was made. The memory of her son dying in her husband’s arms makes her very angry at the neighborhood’s rampant crime.

“All I want is to stop violence and get guns off the streets,” she said.

Delores Shazeia Pinkston, 16, a friend of Marvin Wiggins who was shot and killed on Sunday morning writes on a memorial in the hallway of his apartment building. (Delphine Reuter/ The Bronx Ink)

Maria Toro, 46-year-old Parkchester resident.

Maria Toro has been missing for a week, police say.

Toro is a 46-year-old resident of 2004 Ellis Ave., in the Bronx. She was last seen on April 30, near 79 Baruch Dr., in Manhattan, according to police reports. She was wearing a T-shirt, navy pants and brown boots, reports say.

Residents from her building told the Bronx Ink on Friday that Toro and her husband, who goes by the nickname Indio, mostly keep to themselves and have a five-year-old daughter.

The family moved into the apartment building a few months ago, said Pleinio Camacho, the building superintendent. Camacho said that he last saw Indio Toro, an employee of a Hunts Point bagel factory, on Sunday evening. Camacho added that Toro’s mother was sick, and she may have gone to care for her.

Sari Flores, another neighbor, said that she saw Toro last week, but she was not presently aware of Toro’s whereabouts.

The NYPD is seeking the public’s assistance in locating the missing woman. If you have any information, please contact the NYPD at 1-800-577-TIPS.

On the afternoon of Aug. 15, 2008, the two off-duty officers became involved in a confrontation with Marlon Smith near the intersection of East 218^th Street and White Plains Road. According to press reports, Robinson was driving her black Chevy Suburban SUV along White Plains Road when she was impeded by the open driver-side door of Smith’s parked vehicle.

Obscenities were exchanged between the officers and Smith, but the incident quickly escalated when, according to witnesses, Anglin got out from the passenger’s side and allegedly sprayed Smith with mace. Smith tried to leave his car to grab Anglin, but was thwarted when Robinson intervened and punched him. The New York Sun reported at the time that, according to the New York Police Department Internal Affairs Bureau’s criminal complaint, the officers then “repeatedly struck him about the head and body with closed fists.”

The bureau report stated that Anglin hit Smith with her gun, and one of the officers placed a gun at his head. Smith required 25 staples to close three lacerations suffered during the incident. The officers were arrested the following day after Smith provided the license plate number of Robinson’s SUV.

Sharifa Milena Nasser, the officers’ lawyer, said she expected the trial to commence in midsummer.

Upon leaving the courtroom, Anglin said she was not allowed to comment on the case.

Ashley Cardero, second from left, and Angelica Nitura, second from right, stood with friends by a memorial on Cromwell Ave., not far from where 17 year-old Juandy Paredes was stabbed to death Friday night. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Juandy Paredes’s crew hangs out at 1164 Cromwell Avenue at night, or at the nearby park just north of Yankee Stadium.  They smoke, drink, and make too much noise. The cops come arrest people all the time for trespassing and being loud. In fact, the kids from this neighborhood say they see the same cop and the same ambulance on the corner by the park every night, waiting for trouble.

Trouble breaks out a lot.

In this stretch of Mt. Eden, thumping a few blocks away from the 4 train, graffiti colors the exteriors, kids with Spanish nicknames and tattoos fight members of rival cliques, and questions are met with “I don’t know anything,” by people who do.

Next to guys in sweats with ear-buds tracing lines from their pockets to their ears, Angelica Nitura looks almost out of place in skinny jeans and a blue cardigan.  She talks about her favorite memory of Paredes, a 17 year-old kid they all called “Frko,” or fresh boy. It was on April Fool’s Day, and someone from another crew had taken a guy’s hat. Paredes stood up for the guy, fighting the kids who had taken the hat until they smashed a bottle over his head. Paredes walked angrily back to Nitura.

“His whole side of his head is bleeding, like busted up, leaking,” said Nitura. “I like that he came back, after washing off all that blood. I like that he stood up for his friend. That was my favorite time.”

Paredes’s crew calls itself the “F— Your Life” group, or “F.Y.L.” for short, but insists it’s not a gang. More like a family where everyone watches the others’ backs. There are maybe 50 or 60 of them, all from the neighborhood. Today, laminated badges that they designed on computers swing from their necks showing pictures of Paredes and “4/16/2010,” the date he was killed a few blocks away at 167th and Jerome Avenue. They cross themselves and kiss their fingers in front of the memorial they’ve built for Paredes, a wooden table with tall plastic flowers under his picture, a Dominican flag, and a collection of candles with pictures of saints on them.

Juandy Paredes, pictured here in a collage made by a family friend. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Their expressions are hard. But only four days after Paredes was murdered, tears come suddenly.

Ashley Cordero is known by her friends as “Shine.” She has her brother’s name tattooed on her right hand, and swirls of color filling the gap between her shirt and her waistband on her left side. She breaks down thinking about the first time she met Paredes. It was July 14th, and she was eating Chinese food in the park. Paredes hung out there a lot because he loved inline skating, trying out tricks on rollerblades that were fitted with a panel on the bottom for sliding along curbs and rails. He told her she was beautiful and he was going to make her his. She offered to share her Chinese food.

Now Cordero is planning the tattoo she’ll get with Paredes’s name and a pair of wings on her back. She and Nitura both feel guilty that he was killed, because they encouraged him to leave the building where they were chilling and playing with knives. It was getting too loud, the cops were bound to come. So Paredes left with two other teen boys and according to Cordero, went to the convenience store on the corner.

Paredes was stabbed five times. Cordero said he flagged down a police van nearby and banged on its windows for help.  “I’m poked, I’m poked,” he told the cops.

Then he collapsed. Paramedics attended to him there on the street, but he died before he arrived at Lincoln Hospital.

The man charged with murdering him lives a nine-minute walk from where the mouthpiece used on Paredes lay full of blood in the street, up Jerome Avenue under the train tracks and past tables selling discount perfume and peeled oranges.

At his arraignment at the Bronx Supreme Criminal Court on Tuesday afternoon, Hector Bautista looked much too young to be charged with second-degree murder. The pony-tailed 18 year-old stood silently when the judge denied his request for bail.

Juandy Paredes' friends scrawled graffiti on the wall across from his family's home. They had nicknamed him "Frko," or fresh boy. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Outside the courtroom, friends took turns defending Bautista, a basketball player who they said was a jokester with a good heart who had stopped attending high school. They insisted he was innocent of the stabbing.  But they admitted he was part of the conflicts that, fueled by graffiti, girls, and bragging rights, permeate the world of teenagers like him and Paredes.

“They lived in different places. That’s it,” said a girl who identified herself as Bautista’s girlfriend but would not give her name.

In the dimly-lit apartment on Irving Avenue where Paredes lived, cousins, uncles, aunts, and friends wore black, about to attend his funeral. They had heard about Bautista’s arrest, but wondered if police would be able to catch the other two teens police told the family were involved in the fight.

The family was calm and poised on Tuesday.  Two unsmiling men went about filling a cooler with ice and bottles of water for visitors. Until, contagious as a yawn, a long, slow wail broke out from one of the dark-clad women. She lowered her head and balled her hands into fists. The high-pitched sounds of her crying spread to other family members and escaped into the bright sunlight outside, where Paredes’s friends had spray-painted white graffiti over the entire brick surface of the opposing wall.

“If you stay for 20 minutes you can read it all. Then you’ll understand,” said Dualis, Paredes’s 10 year-old half-sister.

Paredes’s room was covered in graffiti, too, blue and black scrawls painted by him or his friends swarm across the walls. “F.Y.L” appeared in several places, and on the ceiling, emblazoned with a heart was the name Brenda. The room was a disaster. A bare strip of mattress poked out from under piles of clothing that spilled onto the floor and made walking impossible. Boxes of his favorite designer shoes were stacked head-high. A heads-up penny lay near the doorway.

“He would clean it every day but that same day he’d make the same mess,” said Dualis.

Graffiti referring to Juandy Paredes' crew cover the walls in his bedroom. Paredes, 17, was stabbed to death on Friday, April 16. An 18 year-old member of a rival crew has been arrested but is denying the charges. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Paredes used to play “tickle monster” with her on the bed, where they would tickle each other’s feet. They played board games like Monopoly and “Guess Who?” even though Paredes got so mad when she beat him that he swore he wouldn’t play again. Dualis said she usually won.

A computer with a large silver-framed screen sat on a small desk in the corner, where light from the window illuminated the keyboard. Coralys Nunez, who was like an aunt to Paredes, and says he was creative, smart with computers and could “unblock” any website. He thought about being a game designer, if not a fashion designer. He got all A’s in school.

But Paredes had dropped out of school. He just got tired of going, says Dualis. Even Cordero, who says she and Paredes were always together for the past nine months, didn’t know if Paredes had any goals. They just didn’t talk about that, she says.

One of Paredes’s friends created a Facebook page in his memory. Brendalee Torres captioned a picture of her and Paredes kissing with expressions of grief and love, and also, a threat.

“Whoever did this to you gonna get his, trust me.”

Cordero says none of the crew has been killed before, despite all the neighborhood rivalries. But it’s almost as if she thinks Paredes won’t be the last friend for whom she will be forced to light candles.

“The one person you don’t want to lose,” she said,” is the first one to go.”

Just 19 days away from graduation, the senior class at the St. Raymond High School for Boys in the Castle Hill section of The Bronx was mourning on Monday the loss of classmate Jonathan Torres, 18, who was fatally shot on Friday shortly before 6 p.m.

Students are dismissed from St. Raymond School for Boys in Castle Hill (Photo by: Sonia Dasgupta/The Bronx Ink)

Torres, of Highbridge, was with a 20-year-old companion when they were gunned down in front of 3451 Delavall Ave., near Hollers Avenue, in Edenwald. The second victim is listed as being in critical but stable condition at Jacobi Hospital.

Students learned of the shooting quickly and many received word in the early morning hours of Saturday.
Fran Davies, a spokeswoman with the superintendent of school for the Archdiocese of New York, which oversees the school, said the school provided students with grief counselors Monday.

“Our thoughts are with the family and his friends,” Davies said. Although some students gathered over the weekend at the school, on Monday morning the school held a prayer service in honor of Torres.

Senior Jonathan Brown said students were in shock over the shooting. “It’s very hurtful,” Brown said, “and there are no words to express how you feel when you lose a classmate.”

Brown said he and others wrote prayers and thoughts in a book to be presented to Torres’ mother.

“He was a funny kid that could always make you laugh,” Brown added. “He had progressed over the years and showed a lot of dedication.”

Christian Jorge, another one of Torres’ classmates, said the whole situation was upsetting. “It’s going to be a hard last month,” Jorge said. “I knew him for the last four years.”

Jorge described Torres as a bit of a class clown but someone many turned to for encouragement. Torres didn’t play sports, but he was still involved at the school.

“Although we all have our faults, he wasn’t a troublemaker,” Jorge said when asked about the circumstances surrounding the shooting. “I think he was just there at the wrong time.”

The cause of the shooting was unknown on Monday. A police officer, who declined to give a name citing the ongoing investigation, said the two victims were in Edenwald to pick up a motorcycle for an auto shop. They were shot in front of a marble and granite business. A police spokesperson said no arrests have been made and declined to comment further on the investigation.

Officials who work at Torres’ school declined to comment and his family could not be reached.

Students said the school will allow seniors to attend the funeral at St. Peter and Paul’s Church in Melrose on Thursday. The Mass will begin at 8:30 am.

“This wasn’t the way we wanted to end our year,” Jorge said. “This morning they read an excerpt from a letter he wrote in which he talks about going to college and starting a family.”

Senator Klein's message resonated with his brightly dressed supporters. (Photo: Astrid Baez/The Bronx Ink)

Clad in fire engine red T-shirts that evoked the spray paint they despise, residents joined a state senator on Friday afternoon in pledging to send a strong message to vandals who tag buildings.

Calling themselves Court Watchers, these residents are part of a new initiative backed by Sen. Jeffrey D. Klein to eliminate graffiti across the Bronx. Tired of unauthorized street art, the group is taking a more aggressive stance in advocating tougher penalties and jail sentences for offenders.  The plan is simple — watchers will sit in on graffiti cases wearing T-shirts and buttons that illustrate their message: Vandalism is not art.

“Graffiti to our homes, businesses and places of worship causes emotional and in many ways financial distress and is too serious a crime to allow vandals to get away with a slap on the wrist,” Klein said in an official statement.

Although talks for the program began early in October 2009 when Klein met with civic leaders from the Waterbury-LaSalle and Pelham Bay communities, the senator has made cleaning the streets of graffiti a “top priority” for the past 16 years. In 2005, he launched the Graffiti Cleaning Program, which created a hotline for constituents of the 34^th Senate District to request the removal of graffiti from their neighborhoods.

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson’s office estimates that since January, there have been 17 violations of the city’s anti-graffiti laws. People caught in the act of graffiti or in possession of aerosol spray cans, sketching tools and even a Sharpie, with “intent” to damage property were considered to be in violation. Defendants were charged as adults and 13 of those cases resulted in guilty pleas, with one defendant serving a jail sentence. In New York City, a maximum sentence for repeat offenders is 15 days incarceration, while first-time offenders are commonly sanctioned fines of up to $250 per incident or community service.

According to the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, the majority of vandals are tried as first-time offenders with as little as 5 percent actually serving jail time. “It’s probably not a first offense, but simply the first time they were caught,” said Mary Jane Musano, chairwoman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Waterbury-LaSalle Community Association and a resident of the Bronx. “When they disrespect the community, they have to know they’ll be punished.”

Musano believes that graffiti vandalism is once again on the rise and that residents could use the court’s help in putting a stop to it and vice versa. A longtime supporter of the “Adopt-a-Mailbox” campaign, in which residents paint over tagged mailboxes, Musano looks forward to a more aggressive clean-up process. “Senator Klein’s backing is the missing puzzle-piece needed to make this happen,” she said.

Last week, Klein sent clean-up crews to nearly two dozen locations across the Bronx and Westchester County to remove tags from overpasses, railroad bridges and buildings in what was termed a “spring-cleaning effort.”

While Klein agrees that jail time for vandals would cost the city money, he also believes the damage done to the community is are far more costly. According to Klein, financing for clean-ups comes straight from taxpayer’s wallets and is hurtful to the economy and livelihood of the neighborhoods.

“No one will want to live or work in a neighborhood with such an eyesore,” said Joe Bombace, a Bronx resident for nearly 58 years. “Don’t come into our community and deface our homes,” he said.

Not everyone agrees with the senator’s backing of this project. Anthony Aharon, a former resident of the Bronx and freelance graphic artist, sees graffiti as a protest against a system that is already failing the community. “It’s a way to relieve stress, a form of self-expression,” he said. Though Aharon works on commissioned projects, he thinks that jailing people who are caught tagging walls should be considered a violation of First Amendment rights. “Graffiti is another way of talking and being heard,” he said.

Aharon still carries his graffiti tools in his bag.

Authorities displayed heroin they said was seized during a raid on an apartment in the Bronx. Photo: Courtesy of NYPD

On Thursday, four men were arrested and approximately $1 million worth of heroin was seized after an investigation by the New York Police Department’s Bronx Narcotics Major Case Squad and the Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Office culminated with a raid on an apartment in Parkchester. People with knowledge of the case said the bust was indicative of an increasing number of wholesale heroin operations in the Bronx.

Authorities said Apartment 1L in the building at 2112 Starling Ave. was used as a heroin mill, where the drug was packaged and processed before being distributed to a variety of dealers. Heroin packaged at the apartment was placed in glassine envelopes, which according to a press release issued by the Drug Enforcement Administration, were stamped with the brand names “Almighty,” “Heat Wave,” “Maserati” and “Body Bag.”

The exterior of 2112 Starling Avenue, where police said they seized approximately $1 million worth of heroin. Photo: Courtesy of NYPD

Arrested in conjunction with the raid were four men, including 28-year-old Luis Lara, who was described by the DEA as, “a manager of the drug trafficking organization.” Lara was observed, according to the press release, “traveling to both JFK Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport on Sunday and then returning to The Bronx.” Law enforcement officials also said they arrested 28-year-old Jose Polo, who was stopped leaving the apartment with a backpack containing 3,000 glassines of heroin, and two other men who worked at the Parkchester mill. In total, the DEA said the search of the apartment uncovered seven kilos of heroin prepackaged in 50,000 envelopes along with “cardboard boxes of empty glassines, scales and coffee grinders used for cutting the heroin” and “other paraphernalia.”

A source with knowledge of this investigation described heroin mills as a growing problem in the Bronx. Officials said this was a large drug operation, but that there have been at least four major raids on heroin mills in the Bronx since last July, including seizures more than twice the size of this latest bust. New York City special narcotics prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan released a statement  that said the bust was ”one of many significant heroin seizures in the city over the past nine months.” Brennan’s statement cited  a case last July when police officers found a quarter of a million envelopes of the drug, five times as many as were seized in Thursday’s raid.

On Oct. 18, 2008, Christopher Robinson, 18, was beaten to death while being held at Rikers Island.  On Thursday afternoon his mother, Charnel Robinson, stood outside courtroom 210, at the Bronx Supreme Criminal Court and spoke out against the inmates and correctional officers she holds accountable for his death.

Her attorney Sanford Rubenstein said the U.S. Justice Department should investigate what happened at Riker’s Island. A group of correctional officers and inmates  have not been charged with Robinson’s death, but with being linked to a “criminal enterprise” called “the program.” Officers Khalid Nelson, Michael McKie and Denise Albright have been charged with conspiracy.  Nelson and McKie have also been charged with assault, corruption and criminal enterprise.

The indictment says that the officers authorized inmates to take over phone time, sanctioned assaults and even told them how to beat the inmates so as to leave the fewest possible traces of assault.

“The young man, Christopher Robinson, was beaten to death because he would not comply,” Rubenstein said.

In the weeks leading up to his death, Robinson said her son tried speaking to the correctional officers but feared them. “These officers are criminals themselves,” she said.

Christopher Robinson, who had on the court’s instruction found himself a job at Staples after his release, was brought into custody for parole violation. “He got a job under their jurisdiction, he did what he was asked to do,” Rubenstein said. “The system failed him.”

Charnel Robinson discusses death of her son on first day of trial of inmates and corrections officers charged in the incident. (Mamta Badkar/ The Bronx Ink)

According to a Daily News Report, Robinson was first brought up on burglary charges in 2007.

Attorneys for the correctional officers have filed a motion that they be tried separately from the inmates.

“He wasn’t at the facility or even working at the time Mr. Robinson died,” said McKie’s attorney, Joey Jackson. “Trying them with the inmates would be unduly prejudicial to our clients.”

Renée C. Hill, Khalid Nelson’s attorney, said: “My client has been adamant that he is not guilty. He’s been a good officer and we are looking forward to our date in court.”

Nelson is currently out on bail but has been suspended from his duties.

For the boy’s mother, however, the wounds are still fresh.  “No justice can be served to replace a child,” she said and left the courthouse asking that she be kept in people’s prayers.

The parents of murdered nine-month-old Neveah Jackson are being questioned by police. (Courtesy of NY Daily News)

The familiar sounds of 9-month-old Neveah Jackson playing and making noise in apartment 6B at 521 E. 145th St. in the Bronx could not be heard on Monday afternoon. Her father, Eric Jackson, who had been unable to contain his excitement when he found out he would be a dad, was completely out of sight. Neveah’s 19-year-old mother, Jennifer Brito, who was often seen by neighbors dropping her wide-eyed baby with curly dark brown hair and caramel skin at Jackson’s apartment did not bump into anyone on her way back to her nearby home.

The weekend’s events had changed these three lives forever.

The police responded on Saturday to Neveah Jackson’s Mott Haven home to a call just after 11p.m. of a baby not breathing. After traveling to the sixth-floor flat, they found Neveah unconscious.

Neveah was evacuated by emergency medical services and rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. She died of skull fractures and brain injuries, medical examiners determined Sunday.

According to the Daily News, Neveah’s father, who hasn’t been charged, told investigators that he had been downloading music on his computer with his daughter on his lap moments before the accident. When he leaned forward, he said, she fell and hit her head on a desk.

Neveah’s family is skeptical about Jackson’s story. On Monday, Jackson’s aunt Darlene, who declined to give her last name, spoke to The Bronx Ink while walking to the apartment Jackson shares with his mother. Darlene was on her way to visit her sister, Jackson’s mother, for the first time since finding out through Channel 12 on television that Neveah had been beaten to death.

“If she fell that wouldn’t have killed her,” Darlene said. “Someone must have bashed her head.”

A medical examiner ruled Neveah’s death homicide.

Darlene who lives in the building next to Jackson, last saw Neveah the day of her death. She desperately wanted to know what had happened.

But no one at the apartment answered Darlene’s frantic knocking Monday afternoon. She stood teary eyed before walking over to the neighbor’s door and knocking.

Joey Cappas, 26, has lived in Jackson’s building at number 6A for the last six years. He doubted that Neveah died the way her father said she did but did not think the man his nephews liked so much was capable of hurting his own daughter.

“I’m surprised what happened — it has to be an accident,” Cappas said standing by his door after opening it for Darlene. “He used to spoil her and would carry her around a lot. He never would be abusive – never.”

Neveah’s father was used to looking after children. Cappas said Jackson had worked for a few years in a company that recruits young people to work with handicapped children. When Jackson stopped working there, he collected unemployment benefits, which helped pay for all the food Cappas recalled that Neveah loved to eat.

Investigators from the 40th Precinct questioned both parents but Neveah’s mother Brito was eventually released.

The investigation continues.

Close to 95 % of cases supported by DNA evidence end in a guilty verdict, experts say. (AP)

A yearlong investigation failed to unearth any leads on the case, and it was abandoned. Nearly three decades later, however, samples of skin cells found under the victim’s fingernails were subjected to DNA testing, and a suspect was identified: 56-year old Jesus Aguilera. On Wednesday, the Bronx State Supreme Court unsealed an indictment against him with a single count for murder in the second degree.

Police Sgt. Carlos Nieves of the New York Police Department told the Bronx Ink that Aguilera is already serving two sentences of 20 years to life for the murders of Guillermo Graniella, 30, and Josephina Cepada, 24, committed in August and September 1981, respectively. Graniella’s murder took place on Park Avenue in the Bronx, Cepada’s on State Street in Manhattan. “Similar to Moore,” Nieves noted, “both Graniella and Cepada died from strangulation.”

The new technology provides the strongest evidence in many prosecutions, experts say.

“For juries, it is definitely the most important piece of the puzzle; DNA is considered the gold standard of evidence,” said Lawrence Kobilinsky, a professor of forensic sciences and chairman of the Department of Sciences at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Kobilinsky added that close to 95 percent of the cases that involve DNA evidence end with a guilty verdict.

DNA testing was first used in criminal cases in the 1990s, and “it was a revolution for investigations because it is much more stable than proteins or carbohydrates; those degraded very fast,” Kobilinsky went on. Since then, “progress in testing technologies, in computer technologies and the expansion of the DNA database have made it extremely reliable and sensitive.” Kobilinsky, who is also the co-author of the book “DNA: Forensic and Legal Applications,” explained that “until four or five years ago, skin cells could only be analyzed if at least 15 cells were collected. But now, a new technique called ‘low copy number’ allows analysts to get information from smaller samples.”

Located in the nucleus of the cell, DNA can be found in samples from blood, semen, bones, saliva, hair, nails and skin cells. As of January of this year, the National DNA Index (NDIS) contains more than 8 million profiles, from convicted offenders to unidentified human remains. The U.S. Department of Justice says that since the NDIS was created in 1989, it “added value to the investigative process” in 103,400 cases. In the state of New York, the 330,390 profiles have helped solve 9,164 investigations.

Still, although accuracy and sensitivity has improved in the past decade, DNA testing is not automatically used in criminal cases. The decision is made on a case-by-case basis by the presiding prosecutor or detective. “New York City has a team of over 180 analysts working on DNA samples from sexual abuse and homicide cases,” Kobilinsky said. “Most jurisdictions don’t have this kind of human resources but still, it isn’t enough to have every criminal investigation include a DNA test.”

Kobilinsky estimates that for a simple case, the cost of analyzing a DNA sample is under $400. “In private laboratories, the cost can be higher, but in publicly funded forensic crime labs, it remains rather cheap,” he said. Cheap in money, maybe, but not in time: According to a survey issued in 2005 by the National Bureau of Justice Statistics, DNA analyses are “10 times more time consuming and complex than other forensic services.”

There are more reasons why DNA should not be looked at as a definitive end to crime investigations, experts said.

“DNA evidence is like any other evidence,” said David H. Kaye, a law professor at Penn State. “Once you’ve collected it and matched it with a person, it doesn’t answer every question. You have to find out how and when those DNA samples got there. DNA associates a person with an event, but the explanation for that association could prove him/her innocent.”

Jesus Aguilera pleaded not guilty in this third prosecution, even though he confessed to his two prior convictions, according to Rachel Singer, director of DNA prosecution and the assistant district attorney in Aguilera’s trial.

For this new homicide charge, Aguilera faces up to 25 years behind the bars.

"Now that this is over, I can live my life," said Albert Garcia. (Joshi/Bronx Ink)

Albert Garcia was manning the grill at a McDonald’s in the Bronx late one night when Officer John Florio of the New York Police Department bought a Big Mac in the drive-through. The next day, Garcia was arrested, with Florio alleging that Garcia, then 18 years old, put ground-up shards of glass in the sandwich. Florio claimed that one bite of the sandwich left him with a chipped tooth and cuts in both his mouth and throat.

Five years later, on Tuesday, Garcia was cleared by a Bronx Supreme Court jury of all charges, including a felony count of attempting to assault a police officer. Garcia’s attorney, Raymond Aab, called the case, “one lie after another, an outrage.” Garcia, now 23, expressed relief in a press conference on Thursday.

“People from my neighborhood who didn’t know would come up to me and say, ‘Oh, look, that’s him, that’s burger boy,’ ” Garcia said. “It was hard for me to get a job. I have a son, so it was hard for me to support him, to get work. This was on my back. This was in my way of living my life.”

Garcia was working at the McDonald’s at 875 Garrison Ave. in the Bronx on January 29, 2005, when Florio, a 20-year-veteran of the police department and a member of the city’s K-9 unit, purchased a Big Mac. After eating part of the hamburger, Florio complained to his supervising officer that glass had been put in the hamburger. Officers from the 41st Precinct were then dispatched to the restaurant to investigate.

There, they arrested Garcia, taking him back to the police station, where he claims that he was interrogated for hours and was the subject of verbal and physical coercion by the officers. He maintains that as a result of the harsh treatment, he gave a false confession in writing and on videotape.

“I felt trapped, really confused. I really didn’t know what was going on,” said Garcia, who told police officers that no glass was in the hamburger. He added that police officers “kept putting so much pressure on me, so much pressure. I was scared. I was crying. I didn’t know what to do, so I kind of gave up, and I gave them what they wanted to hear.”

He added, “They really treated me like a dog.”

In Garcia’s confession, which he later recanted, he admitted to smashing a picture frame, grinding the shards of glass and putting them in the hamburger. The Bronx district attorney’s office began prosecuting Garcia soon after his arrest. “There’s nothing in the statements and in the video that shows physical or psychological coercion,” said Gary Weil, the prosecuting attorney. Calls to the 41st Precinct were not answered. By Friday afternoon the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information had not responded to a request for comment.

However, forensic analysis of the glass, which was revealed in court, indicated that it was rounded and its thickness was inconsistent with that of a picture frame. Expert testimony indicated that the shards were consistent with “ubiquitous container glass.” Investigators also compared DNA evidence from both Garcia and Florio to a hair that was found on the sandwich; neither returned as a match. The jury took 40 minutes to return a not guilty verdict.

Aab said he believes that Florio made up the story in order to sue McDonald’s. “The fact is the cop made the whole thing up to get a pay day,” said Aab. “Within a couple days, he sued McDonald’s, and that speaks for itself.”

Florio was unavailable for comment, but his attorney, Richard Kenny, strongly disputed that claim. “The allegation that this is feigned is utterly ludicrous,” Kenny said.

Aab and Garcia said that they are considering filing a countersuit, but until then, Garcia said that he’s looking forward to spending more time with his 4-year-old son and enjoying a life without looming court dates.

“Now that this is over, now I can live my life,” he said.

Early Monday afternoon Yesenia Rodriguez ran down the stairs from the second floor in the Morrisania Air Rights apartment complex at 3073 Park Ave. in the South Bronx.  She was crying. The man upstairs, she said in Spanish, had thrown her to the ground and threatened to kill her.

Police Officer Robert Salerno (NYPD)

She found neighbor, Jimmy Molina, 54, reading a newspaper in the lobby. She told him that Santiago Urena, the son of an elderly woman she cared for, was making repeated sexual advances towards her and she was fed up. When she threatened to call the police he pulled out a gun and yelled, “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you.”

She and Molina called 911 and as they waited she told him the story.  A few minutes later, about 12:30 p.m. four police officers from the 44th precinct entered the lobby.

“They asked where the guy with the gun was,” Molina said. He interpreted for the officers as Rodriguez told them Urena was on the second floor. Urena’s brother, Demetrio, 69, led them upstairs. Two cops, Molina said, ran up the stairs to apartment 2G and the other two took the elevator.

Less than a minute later Molina heard gunshots. Santiago Urena, 57, opened fire as officers approached a bedroom, police later said. Three .38 caliber bullets fired by Urena struck Police Officer Robert Salerno, 25. Two entered his unprotected lower abdomen and a third lodged in the bulletproof vest that covered his chest. Salerno returned fire, emptying his 16 round magazine. The three other officers shot a total of five times.

Molina was outside the building when about, he said, “two minutes later four cops brought him out carrying him.” Two held his legs and two held his hands — “running to the ambulance.”

This .38 caliber revolver was recovered by police from the crime scene. (NYPD)

Salerno, the first police officer shot in the line of duty this year, was taken to Lincoln Hospital where surgeons removed the bullets. Urena was not so lucky. Police who returned to the apartment after taking Salerno to the ambulance found Urena dead of what appeared to be a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. On Tuesday the medical examiner determined that police rounds killed Urena.

Urena’s 91-year-old mother was in another room of the apartment during the shooting and was later carried out of the building.

Police cordoned off the block and neighbors milled around the street in the afternoon rain. They were shocked by the shootout. Nelson Figuerola who lives on the 20th floor of the 23-floor building pointed across 158th street and said he would have expected gunplay over there, but not in his building.

“That building they call Vietnam,” he said. “This one is a lot better.”

Figuerola has lived in 2073 Park Ave. since 1982 and remembered Urena as a quiet man that used to work at the airport. “He cleaned airplanes,” he said. “Nobody expected this.”

Marie Garcia, 23, lives on the 16th floor and was awakened by sirens as dozens of police swarmed the area minutes after the shooting. She looked out her window and saw them running into the building. “They looked like sardines,” she said. “They were all trying to fit in the front door at once.”

The crowd of more than 100 that formed shortly after the shooting dispersed as heavier rain fell in the late afternoon. A handful returned after dark to watch the medical examiners wheel Urena’s body out on a stretcher.

A resident of 3073 Park Ave. in the Bronx reacts to questions by the media, Monday, after a police officer was shot in her building. (Alec Johnson/The Bronx Ink)

“The defendant has brutally murdered his own mother, Marlene, and his own brother Nashan,”  Assistant District Attorney David Birnbaum said at today’s sentencing. “And chopped up their bodies, and unceremoniously threw them into the Harlem River.”

The Harlem River, where Lamar Platt threw his mother's and brother's bodies (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Platt’s lanky 6-foot-2-inch frame was clad in a bright orange Department of Corrections jumpsuit when he entered the courtroom in Bronx State Supreme Court this afternoon for the sentencing.

The twisted cornrows and neat goatee he sported on his MySpace page at the time of the murder, Nov.  18, 2007, had been replaced by a closely shaven head and thick full beard. During the hearing Platt sat quietly with his shoulders taut as his hands were cuffed in front of him. As the sentence was read, he simply stared at the floor, barely grimacing.

It was Platt’s 65-year-old grandmother Elveda who first made contact with the police.  She grew concerned after she was unable to get in touch with her family over the phone from her home in Washington, D.C. She had not spoken with her 42-year-old daughter, Marlene, and her grandsons, Nashan, 22, and Lamar, 26, for days. Platt  had succumbed to a psychotic episode that led him to shoot his mother and brother and carve up their bodies, according to his lawyer, Amy Galacchio, and his social worker, Mishka Vertin.

He placed the dismembered body parts in luggage and garbage bags and dragged them in a laundry cart to the Roberto Clemente State Park in the South Bronx, prosecutors said. Then he dumped the bags into the Harlem River that flows next to the park.

Within a week, Platt’s grandmother Elveda Wright traveled to New York City, where she met the police at her daughter’s first-floor apartment on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, in the Morris Heights section of the western Bronx. Platt was found near the apartment. He failed to account for his mother and brother, prompting the police to climb through the window into the apartment, where they found a trail of blood.

“He devastated and wiped out an entire family,” Birnbaum said. “Marlene is no more. Nashan is no more, and now Lamar will spend the best part of his life in jail.”

Outside the courtroom, Birnbaum and Gallicchio, along with Vertin, discussed the gruesome details of the case. Using his own body, Birnbaum showed how Platt methodically carved up his brother’s body into parts small enough to fit into a Samsonite suitcase.

The police found only parts of the two bodies. They recovered Nashan’s sawed body, from his waist down to his knees. In another suitcase, the police found Marlene’s foot and head, and some more limbs in garbage bags. Marlene was a nurse’s aide and a single mother who had struggled to make sure both her children would be able to go to college. Nashan was set to graduate from Lehman College the year of his death.

“It was a horrific case,” Birnbaum said. “I think that the end result was satisfactory to society and we accomplished what we needed to.”

Birnbaum recommended the sentence that was handed down in court, and Platt’s lawyer, Amy Gallicchio, said she also considered it a fair punishment. Birnbaum relayed that Platt’s remaining family, especially Wright, agreed the defendant deserved 40 years in prison and five additional years of supervision once he’s released — around 2050. No mention was made of parole.

Before the murders, Platt had worked as a barber and had dropped out of college. Vertin believes it was   the combination of a long undiagnosed psychiatric condition combined with a marijuana habit that induced the violent episode. In 2007, Platt had sought medical help; but his stay in the hospital was short and he never received a full treatment.

“He really got nothing,” Vertin said. “And this just continued and continued until…” she trailed off. It was only after he was arrested that he was given the treatment he needed.

Platt has been lucid since his arrest. Gallicchio said he had been found to be clinically insane, but personally chose a prison sentence over an indefinite stay at a psychiatric facility.

The day after a 17-year-old was killed by joyriding teens who crashed a stolen car, the police line tape lay limply across the sidewalk and the accident scene was void of life. A destroyed bumper, headlight and side view mirror were strewn among a smattering of broken glass and plastic. Meanwhile, six blocks away, at the Rosedale Avenue house where Keon Nedd lived with his mother and four siblings, his family and friends sat around in mismatched chairs talking quietly, still describing him in the present tense.

Family and friends of Keon Nedd, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident early Monday morning gathered at his mother's home Tuesday where they created a memorial in his honor. (Alec Johnson/ The Bronx Ink)

A row of candles, with messages to Keon scrawled on the glass holders sits in front of the metal fence in front of his home. Behind them stand empty alcohol bottles, transformed into vases for blue and pink carnations and a single dying yellow rose.

More candles are set up in a cardboard box turned on its side. The box is now an integral part of the memorial though, covered in messages like “Your gone but nevah forgotten.” A sharpie lies on top, inviting others to contribute.

Keon, a tenth grader at Columbus High School was on his way home from a party early Monday morning, when a car crossing Seward Avenue on White Plains Road lost control and flipped on to the sidewalk, killing him. The car had been stolen from its owner earlier that day, and the driver and passengers fled the scene after the accident, his family said. Police would not provide additional details.

His grandmother, Carol Harris George, last saw Keon three days ago, when she dropped by his house to give him some money. She raised Keon until he was seven, and still carries his nine-year-old photo in her wallet. “I still can’t catch myself,” she said. “I haven’t eaten since the accident.”

Carol Harris George, Keon Nedd's grandmother, has kept this photo of nine year old Nedd in her wallet for years. (Alec Johnson/ The Bronx Ink)

George is trying to decide where to hold the funeral; she’s worried her church isn’t large enough. “That church is not going to fit all of his friends,” she said.

Many of these friends gathered in the driveway and even more were upstairs. Keon, who loved Jamaican music, was the joker of the group, they said. “He was a clown who used to live next door,” Mariah Hueston said. “He was always happy no matter what and he loved to play fight.”

Keon’s cousin, Anthony Bryant, turned 15 today. But his birthday was barely on his mind; instead he mourned the loss of someone he considered a brother. They were together “24/7,” he said, playing pickup games of basketball, rapping, joking and just sitting around.

Before he moved back to the Bronx 3 years ago, Keon loved to mow grass and fix the lawnmower when it broke, at his home in Monticello, N.Y. He’d take apart just about anything from computers to TVs and would work on his stepfather’s car, his grandmother said. “He liked doing things with his hands.”

He wanted to be a mechanic or an engineer when he grew up and had already built his mother a computer. The oldest of five children, Keon was close to his siblings. “He picked them up from school and took them to the bus in the morning,” his mother, Skeeter Nedd, said.

Though none of his friends who gathered at the house had been with him the night of the accident, Destiny Hueston was one of the last people to speak to Keon before his death – They talked on the phone around 12:30 about meeting up this weekend.

“I can’t take it,” she said knowing that he was killed by teenagers who stole a car.

George and his mother both were appalled that the culprits had not turned themselves in. “Kids will be kids,” Skeeter said. “But you always have to know there is an action behind what you do.”

The scene of the crash where Keon Nedd, 17, was killed early Monday morning was still littered with debris from the accident on Tuesday afternoon. (Alec Johnson/ The Bronx Ink)

Cruz, 38, had pleaded guilty to Murder 1 and gave testimony against his cousin, Devon Miller, who is also on trial. Under the terms of the agreement, the plea deal could not be withdrawn at a later date by Cruz and any violation would lead to an unrestricted sentence instead of a possible minimum 20 years.

A New York City detective leads Carlos Cruz, 36, of Southbridge, Mass., away from the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, April 15, 2008, after he was arrested and charged with murder in the shooting death of 18-year-old girlfriend, Chelsea Frazier. Cruz was charged along with his cousin, Devon Miller, 25, of the Bronx, in the murder of Frazier, who was gunned down Sunday after driving to the Bronx's Castle Hill neighborhood with Cruz and their infant son, according to police. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

According to the prosecuting lawyers, Cruz later stated that he was completely innocent — a declaration they said was a direct violation of his plea and should lead to a life sentence without parole.

Cruz and his 18-year-old girlfriend, Chelsea Frazier, had driven from their home in Southbridge, Mass., for a day of shopping in the Bronx on April 13, 2008, when, according to Cruz’s initial account, they pulled over on Barrett Avenue in the Castle Hill neighborhood to attend to their 1-year-old son Elijah. Cruz claimed that a robber appeared at the car door and, during the subsequent struggle, fatally shot Frazier as well as shooting Cruz in the leg.

A witness described seeing the attacker, a man with dreadlocks who was driving a green SUV, being chased down the street by Cruz, who was shouting, “You forgot to shoot me.” The description and vehicle matched those of Miller.

Cruz’s lawyer chose to reserve comments to the court until the new sentencing hearing on March 22.

It was a no-fuss delivery of a three-year probation sentence Thursday at the Bronx Supreme Court as Labruzzi, a former captain with the Department of Corrections at the Adolescent Reception and Detention Center at Rikers Island, accepted his punishment.

Accused of sexual abuse by a dozen inmates between the ages of 16 and 19, Labruzzi never went to trial. In the plea bargain, the 32 charges against Labruzzi were dropped except one: Endangering the welfare of a child.

“All charges accusing him of sexual abuse will be dismissed once he’s sentenced,” Gullo said. “It will say on his record that he did not touch the private parts of the inmates.” In addition to probation, Labruzzi will not be allowed to enter the homes of his clients, a component of his new sales job.

Gullo claimed that the case against his client was weak.

“A lot of times inmates retaliate because they don’t like the captain,” he said. “All these complaints are from people who have a criminal record.”

In 2006 the city’s Department of Investigation released a press statement about the investigation into the abuse cases against Labruzzi:

“Labruzzi allegedly took the eight inmates on 10 separate occasions to a secluded, locked area within [the Adolescent Reception and Detention Center]. Once there, Labruzzi allegedly inappropriately touched the inmates’ genitals through their clothing, forced them to disrobe, asked them to stand or squat before him, and fondled some inmates’ genitals or buttocks.”

Labruzzi declined to comment and offered no final words on the case to Judge John S. Moore of State Supreme Court in the Bronx.

Gullo said that two of the inmates who filed charges against Labruzzi were deported. The prosecutor, Assistant Bronx District Attorney Alexandra Militano, declined to comment.

But Judge Moore did have the last word before accepting the deal reached by Militano and Gullo:

“The department does recommend jail,” he said. “There are reasons also why ultimately there is a plea bargain.”

“Although we did not make it mandatory,” he added, “counseling and a sex offenders program can be imposed by the Department of Corrections.” Neither of these options were imposed on Labruzzi as part of his probation.

A Bronx Supreme Court Judge this morning overturned the conviction of a landlord found guilty in the deaths of two firefighters.

Cesar Rios was found guilty of criminal negligence after Lt. Curtis Meyran and Firefighter John Bellew were killed trying to battle flames in his Tremont apartment building. But in a rare move this morning, Judge Margaret Clancy of Bronx Supreme Court set aside that 2009 verdict, deciding there was not enough evidence to show that Rios was aware of the dangerous conditions that led to the firefighters’ deaths.

Six firefighters responded to the January 2005 fire that investigators said started when overloaded and spliced wires sparked, igniting bedding material. The men became trapped inside the apartment because of an illegal partition that blocked access to the fire escape and made thermal imaging of the fire less accurate. The partition also trapped the heat until it reached explosive levels, sending a fireball coursing through the narrow hallway and cutting off any escape route.

The firefighters were forced to jump out of the window onto pavement five stories below. Meyran and Bellew were killed on impact.

Rafael Castillo, the tenant who built the illegal partitions, was found innocent of negligent homicide in 2009. But a separate jury found Rios guilty.

Judge Clancy cited “complex issues” in the court’s decision to revisit the case, including the revelation that a juror contacted one of the firefighter witnesses over Facebook before returning a verdict. Clancy emphasized it was not this breach of conduct, but the lack of sufficient evidence that led her to overturn the guilty verdict. She said the prosecution never proved that Rios had actual knowledge that Castillo had built the partition that led to the deaths.

Jeannette Myran, seen five years ago with her children at the funeral of her firefighter husband, criticized Tuesday's decision in Bronx Supreme Court. (Photo: Associated Press Archive)

Family members, including the widows of the two firefighters killed in the blaze, watched bleary-eyed from the benches of the courtroom, trying to interpret the decision. “She let him go,” cried Jeanette Meyran, her brash voice tinged with bitterness at what she called a ridiculous liberal decision after six months of waiting.

“I hope she has a big pillow to put her head on tonight,” Meyran said. “The scar’s just been opened again and again.”

Surviving firefighter Jeffrey Cool was furious that Clancy could single-handedly overturn a verdict reached by 12 people. It is uncommon for a judge to set aside a conviction, although no one keeps statistics on how often it happens. “She’s supplanting a jury,” said defense attorney Delmas Costin. “This is huge.”

Columbia Law Professor David Richman said, “It’s certainly unusual.” But a judge may review the evidence and decide no reasonable jury would have convicted.

The Bronx District Attorney’s Office has yet to decide whether it will appeal.

“There’s no consideration for the families,” said Jeanette Meyran. “It’s going to be 10 years before this is all over.”

Reported by Shreeya Sinha and Mamta Badkar. Statistics provided by Edward Talty Gang Prosecutor for the Bronx District Attorney.