A Long Island kayaker drifts along. File photo by Talia Amorosano
A Long Island kayaker drifts along. File photo by Talia Amorosano
By Elana Glowatz
Applications will soon be available for Port Jefferson residents who want to use one of the village’s kayak racks in the coming season.
Those interested will be able to pick up applications at Village Hall through the month of March. They are due by the end of that month.
Once the application period ends, the village will hold a lottery that will be open to the public, on April 1.
The village has racks in two locations: Centennial Park, which is located on Port Jefferson Harbor near the Port Jefferson Yacht Club, formerly known as the Setauket Yacht Club; and at the beach at the end of Crystal Brook Hollow Road, on Mount Sinai Harbor. Each rack has slots for six boats on it.
Village Clerk Bob Juliano said on Wednesday that there are at least five racks available for a total of 30 slots. With the village’s efforts to add to its storage space for resident kayaks, he said there are possibly six more slots than that, but he had yet to hammer down a final inventory number.
According to Juliano, officials will choose the winners at random, and determine at which location they can store their boats based upon what the applicants wrote in as their first and second choices and, as the lottery goes on, upon remaining availability.
There is a limit to one boat per household. After paying a $10 administrative fee, winners will get stickers to put on their boats to note their permitted use of the racks.
Before Terryville residents dropped off their mail in Port Jefferson Station, they had the Terryville Post Office. Pictured above, that latter post office during the early 20th century. Photo from the Port Jefferson Village historical archive
Terryville residents now get their mail service from the Port Jefferson Station post office, but they used to go to their own little outpost at the home of the postmaster.
Before Terryville residents dropped off their mail in Port Jefferson Station, they had the Terryville Post Office. Pictured above, that latter post office during the early 20th century. Photo from the Port Jefferson Village historical archive
The Port Jefferson Village historical archive puts the operation dates of the Terryville Post Office as 1888 to 1918 and from 1924 to 1958. That first stretch of years coincided with a time when the eponymous Terry family was flourishing in the area.
The four Terry brothers moved in from Farmingville to farm around Old Town Road, Jayne Boulevard and the street that would later become Terryville Road, and built homes in what was once a wooded area, according to George Moraitis.
Members of the Terry family are buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery, and the late Moraitis, formerly the cemetery’s historian, included biographical information on them in his written history “Forevermore on Cedar Hill.” Moraitis noted that the third-born brother, Thomas R. Terry, helped start a local school district in 1874 and served as its first board president before offering his home on Terryville Road — by Viceroy Place, near what is now Comsewogue’s Terryville Road Elementary School — to serve as a post office. His cousin’s son, Preston Terry, was the first postmaster.
The Terryville Union Hall had been erected just a year before, in 1887.
Though the post office had that brief stint between 1918 and 1924 when it was not in operation, it stayed in the family when it reopened. According to Moraitis, Ruth Terry, the daughter-in-law of Thomas R. Terry through son Harry, was its final postmaster. She was once a teacher in the school system her father-in-law had started decades earlier and had grown up in one of the original homes on Terryville Road’s southern end.
Before Terryville residents dropped off their mail in Port Jefferson Station, they had the Terryville Post Office. Pictured above, that latter post office during the early 20th century. Photo from the Port Jefferson Village historical archive
Harry and Ruth Terry, who also served as Comsewogue School District treasurers, hosted the post office from the early 1950s until 1957, when it merged with the one in Port Jefferson Station.
According to a history of the area included in Brookhaven Town’s 2008 Comsewogue hamlet study, the couple’s residence was on the southeast corner of Terryville Road and Whitman Avenue, which would put it across the street from the post office’s original home, at Thomas R. Terry’s house.
The study history quotes neighbor Audrey Agnew, who describes someone named Mr. Jersey who lived up the street and would “transport Terryville’s mail from [the] Port Jefferson train station to Ms. Terry.”
“When the post office was eliminated, we were promised that we could keep ‘Terryville’ as our address,” Agnew said.
A Mount Sinai woman was killed on Friday night when the car she was riding in struck another vehicle just down the road from the post office and the Mount Sinai Elementary School.
According to the Suffolk County Police Department, 39-year-old Ekaterina Blednykh was riding in a 2000 Toyota Camry on Route 25A at about 11 p.m. when the car’s driver, 25-year-old Tejas Acharekar from Port Jefferson, attempted to make a left onto Chestnut Street to start heading south. The Camry collided with a 2005 Hyundai Sonata that had been going east on Route 25A.
Bednykh was pronounced dead at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson, police said, while both Acharekar and the Sonata’s driver, 23-year-old Mastic Beach resident Kacy McLaughlin, were treated for non-life-threatening injuries at Stony Brook University Hospital.
Detectives from the SCPD’s 6th Squad are investigating the crash. Anyone with information is asked to call them at 631-854-8652.
Update, 2.29.16: Police have reported that Lynn May, the 58-year-old Lake Grove resident who was standing by her parked car during the hit-and-run, has died of her injuries sustained in the crash.
Police said a woman drove away after fatally striking one man with her car and seriously injuring three others on Friday night.
The 61-year-old Medford resident, Kathy Horan, was allegedly driving east on Granny Road at about 8:20 p.m. and, shortly down the road from Brookhaven Town Hall, hit Peter Quoma, a 28-year-old from Selden who had gotten out of his own car because he had hit a parked vehicle.
According to the Suffolk County Police Department, the hit from Horan’s 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe was fatal for Quoma, and also injured the two passengers still inside his 1997 Nissan Maxima as well as the owner of the parked car, who was standing next to it.
Quoma was pronounced dead at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center in East Patchogue, police said, while the two passengers, one male and one female, were treated for minor injuries at Stony Brook University Hospital. Police said the parked car’s owner, 58-year-old Lynn May from Lake Grove, was being treated for serious injuries at Brookhaven Memorial.
Horan, who was not hurt, was charged with leaving the scene of an incident involving a fatality and with leaving the scene of one involving physical injury. She was arraigned on Saturday.
Attorney information for the suspect was not immediately available.
Anyone with information is asked to call the SCPD’s Vehicular Crime Unit at 631-852-6555.
Suffolk County is entering obscure territory this year as some sex offenders drop off the state registry and others have lost restrictions on where they can live.
Laura Ahearn has advocated for local governments to have the power to regulate where registered sex offenders live. File photo
It was exactly one year ago that the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that local laws restricting where sex offenders could live were invalid, following a lawsuit from a registered offender from Nassau County who challenged his own government’s rule that prohibited him from living within 1,000 feet from a school. Judge Eugene Pigott Jr. wrote in his decision that “a local government’s police power is not absolute” and is pre-empted by state law.
State regulations already prohibit certain sex offenders who are on parole or probation from living within 1,000 feet of a school or other child care facility, according to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, but the local laws went further. In Suffolk County, Chapter 745 made it illegal for all registered sex offenders — not just those on parole or probation — to live within a quarter mile of schools, day care centers, playgrounds or their victims. But following Pigott’s decision, that law, while still technically on the books, is no longer enforceable.
To make matters more complicated, Jan. 1 marked the beginning of the end for some of the lowest level sex offenders on the state registry.
Offenders are grouped into one of three levels based on their perceived risk of committing another sex crime. On the lowest rung, Level 1 offenders who have not received special designations for being violent, being repeat offenders or having a “mental abnormality or personality disorder” that makes the person “likely to engage in predatory sexually violent offenses,” according to the Division of Criminal Justice Services, are only included on the registry for 20 years from their conviction. The New York State correction law enacting that system has just turned 20 years old, meaning the earliest offenders added to the registry are beginning to drop off.
The Sex Offender Registration Act obligates Level 2 and Level 3 offenders, as well as those with the additional designations, to remain on the registry for life, although there is a provision under which certain Level 2 offenders can appeal to be removed after a period of 30 years.
At a recent civic association meeting in Port Jefferson Station, Laura Ahearn from the advocacy group Parents for Megan’s Law — which raises awareness about sex crime issues and monitors offenders — gave examples of offenders set to come off the registry this year, including a man who raped a 4-year-old girl, and another who raped and sodomized a woman.
But it doesn’t stop there.
“It is thousands over time that are going to drop off,” Ahearn said.
A database search of Level 1 offenders along the North Shore of Suffolk County turned up many offenders who had been convicted of statutory rape or possession of child pornography, and who had served little to no time in jail. However, there were more serious offenses as well.
“You know when an adult man or an adult woman rapes a 4-year-old, that is just shocking. That [should be] a lifetime registration.”
— Laura Ahearn
Some of the undesignated Level 1 offenders who were convicted shortly after the Sex Offender Registration Act was created include a Smithtown man, now 43, convicted of first-degree sexual abuse against a 19-year-old; a 61-year-old Rocky Point man who sexually abused a 12-year-old girl more than once; a Huntington man, now 40, who sexually abused an 11-year-old; and a Rocky Point man convicted of incest with a 17-year-old.
Ahearn’s group has argued that sex offenders are more likely to reoffend as time goes on. According to Parents for Megan’s Law, recidivism rates are estimated to be 14 percent after five years and 27 percent after 20 years.
One midnight in January, Suffolk County police arrested a 48-year-old man, later discovered to be a registered Level 1 sex offender, in Fort Salonga after the suspect was allegedly caught undressed inside a vehicle with a 14-year-old boy. Police reported at the time that the two arranged the meeting over a cellphone application and there had been sexual contact.
The man had been convicted of sexual misconduct with a 16-year-old girl in 2003 and was sentenced to six years of probation. His new charges included criminal sex act and endangering the welfare of a child.
“So it makes no sense logically” to let Level 1 offenders drop off the registry after 20 years, Ahearn said in Port Jefferson Station. She has advocated for the terms to be extended or to have offenders appeal to be removed from the registry, like Level 2 offenders can after 30 years, so it can be decided on a case-by-case basis.
It’s a “you-know-it-when-you-see-it kind of thing, because you know when an adult man or an adult woman rapes a 4-year-old, that is just shocking,” she said. “That [should be] a lifetime registration.”
Even if the offenders remain on the registry, the court ruling that struck down restrictions on where most offenders can live has made matters trickier.
Ahearn said the fact that multiple layers of local government had enacted restrictions contributed to the situation.
“What happened is it got out of control,” she said.
County and town laws previously restricted sex offenders from living near schools and playgrounds. File photo
Below the Suffolk County level, for example, the Town of Brookhaven had its own restrictions that prohibited offenders from living within a quarter mile of schools, playgrounds or parks.
There are bills floating around the state government that would tighten restrictions on where certain sex offenders could live, but the only one that has gained traction is a bill state Sen. Michael Venditto (R-Massapequa) sponsored, along with state Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport), that would return to local governments the power to regulate where offenders can reside.
“Local laws designed to protect children against registered sex offenders are enacted in response to unique conditions and concerns of specific communities and should act in complement with existing state law,” the bill’s summary read.
Although the bill passed the Senate last year, it died in the Assembly. But Venditto reintroduced his proposal this year.
For more information about sex offender laws or to search for sex offenders in a specific neighborhood, visit the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services at www.criminaljustice.ny.gov or the Parents for Megan’s Law group at www.parentsformeganslaw.org.
An officer had to put a tourniquet on a woman’s arm after her friend allegedly stabbed her during an argument.
Officers responded to a stabbing report on Magnolia Drive in Selden at about 3 a.m. Monday to find a 23-year-old woman who had lost a lot of blood from being stabbed in her right arm, the Suffolk County Police Department said. According to the 911 caller, the attack happened during a dispute between friends.
One of the 6th Precinct officers on the scene, Kevin Butler, put a tourniquet on her arm to control the bleeding, police said, and stabilized her. The Manorville woman had emergency surgery at Stony Brook University Hospital and was admitted.
The alleged stabber, 22-year-old Ashley Zervakos, was charged with first-degree assault.
She lives at the house where the incident took place, police said.
Attorney information for Zervakos was not immediately available. She was scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday.
Butler is a member of the SCPD’s Medical Crisis Action Team, which is a group of officers with advanced training in emergency medical care. The team was created in 2008 to potentially respond to mass casualty events, such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks or plane crashes.
A teenager has been missing since the end of January and police are looking for the public’s help to find her.
Brianna Graff’s guardian reported her missing from their Lake Grove home on Jan. 30, police said, after she had been last seen at 11 p.m. the day before.
The 15-year-old, who lives on Hawkton Place, is white and 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighs 125 pounds and has brown eyes and dark brown hair, police said.
Detectives from the 4th Squad are investigating her case, but do not believe there is foul play involved, according to police.
Anyone with information on her location is asked to call 911 or to call the squad at 631-854-8452.
A man attempting to cross Main Street on Saturday night was seriously injured when a Volkswagen struck him.
According to the Suffolk County Police Department, the pedestrian, 67-year-old Huntington Station resident Matthew McKay, was crossing the street in Huntington at about 9:20 p.m., just west of Nassau Road, when an eastbound Jetta hit him.
McKay was being treated at Huntington Hospital for serious injuries, police said. The 2016 Volkswagen’s driver, a 57-year-old Centerport woman, was not hurt.
Detectives from the 2nd Squad are investigating the incident. Anyone with information is asked to call them at 631-854-8252.
A Coram man was allegedly found driving drunk in a vehicle that had just recently struck an officer while fleeing police questioning at the scene of a grand larceny.
According to the Suffolk County Police Department, the incident began with 5th Precinct officers responding on Wednesday to a report of an attempted larceny at the 76 gas station on Route 112 in Medford. When the officers were leaving, a vehicle police have described as belonging to the suspect in the crime returned with three people riding in it, and the officers approached it and talked to the people inside.
Police said during the discussion, the 2014 Dodge Charger fled, hitting one of the officers as well as a police car. The officer who was struck fired three shots at the Dodge.
He was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at the hospital.
The driver went north on Route 112 as one of the other vehicle occupants fled the scene, police said. The Dodge was found shortly afterward on Flores Lane in Middle Island.
Sheldon Davis, a 43-year-old Coram resident, was driving the Dodge at the time it was found, police said. He was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated.
Attorney information for the suspect was not immediately available. He was scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday.
Police said the third occupant of the Dodge at the scene of the grand larceny in Medford was questioned and later treated at the hospital for cuts from the glass that broke when the Dodge was shot.
The other officer at the scene, who had not been struck by the Dodge, was evaluated at the hospital, police said.
An officer and a good Samaritan went into a blazing home on Wednesday afternoon to save an elderly woman who is disabled, according to the Suffolk County Police Department.
The 2nd Precinct’s Matthew Funaro responded to the house fire on Old Winkle Point Road in Eaton’s Neck at 4:45 p.m. to find flames and heavy smoking coming from the second floor, police said. He went inside and found resident Helen Morris, who was in a wheelchair, in the first-floor living room.
With the help of 55-year-old Kings Park resident Joseph Cartelli, who police said had been performing work in the home, Funaro carried the 88-year-old Morris out to safety. She was later treated for minor, non-life-threatening injuries at Huntington Hospital.
According to police, the Eaton’s Neck and Northport fire departments put out the blaze at the house, which is just off Northport Bay.
Detectives from the SCPD’s Arson Squad were investigating the cause of the fire, police said.
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