A Commack woman and her dogs Marlo and Bo were saved from their burning home Friday morning, with the help of two firefighters and a police officer.
The Suffolk County Police Department said 45-year-old Elyssa Roth dropped Marlo out of her bedroom window into the responders’ arms, then jumped out herself. Bo was later saved from inside the house.
It all started shortly before 9:30 a.m., when someone called 911 to report the fire on Suttonwood Drive, police said. Officer David Mascarella from the 4th Precinct and Commack Fire Department volunteers Bernie Simoes and Paul Carnevale responded to find heavy smoke and limited visibility at the burning home. The heavy flames and intense heat prevented Mascarella and Simoes from going inside, police said.
The responders convinced Roth to drop Marlo the dog from her second-floor bedroom window, then followed and the men caught her. Bo was found inside the house and treated at an animal hospital.
That second dog was not the only one who needed medical attention. Police said Roth and Mascarella were treated for smoke inhalation at Stony Brook University Hospital and at Smithtown’s St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center, respectively. The pair of firefighters were treated for respiratory distress at the scene of the blaze.
According to police, arson detectives have determined the fire had a non-criminal cause.
The girl hit by a car on Main Street last week has died of her injuries, according to the Suffolk County Police Department.
Kings Park’s 11-year-old Holly Gallo died on Dec. 10, police said, five days after a van struck her as she crossed the road in her hometown. The van had been traveling east and had just passed Thompson Street at the time of the crash, roughly 11 a.m. that Saturday.
Holly initially survived the crash but had been in critical condition at Stony Brook University Hospital before her death on Thursday.
The van’s driver, a 52-year-old Freeport man, was not hurt.
Shortly after the crash, police said they had impounded the van for a safety check and detectives from the 4th Squad were investigating.
A Gofundme.com website was launched in the days following Holly’s death in which family members and friends raised more than $48,000 to help the family. Sabrina Klemballa, who identified herself as a close member of the family, said the family has felt support from the North Shore and beyond since the 11-year-old’s death.
A new sidewalk runs along Highlands Boulevard in upper Port Jefferson. Photo by Elana Glowatz
They blazed the path and now they’re going to light the way.
With a new sidewalk already paved along Highlands Boulevard, keeping pedestrians out of the road, Port Jefferson officials are now working on installing streetlights on the route.
A new sidewalk runs along Highlands Boulevard in upper Port Jefferson. Photo by Elana Glowatz
The village board of trustees on Monday approved spending $28,000 for Flushing-based Welsbach Electric Corp. to put in eight decorative streetlight poles and light fixtures along the winding sidewalk, between the entrance to the Highlands condominiums and Oakland Avenue in uptown Port Jefferson.
That dollar figure is higher than an original $17,000 cost approved in August. Mayor Margot Garant explained at Monday’s board meeting that the village needs more lighting than initially expected.
“We had originally contemplated putting three Dickens lanterns in,” she told the trustees, referring to the antique-style streetlights the village uses. But the “village lanterns are not known for their best illumination. So if we were to light [it] properly, it would need one Dickens lantern every 50 feet.”
However, the bumped-up expense, which will come out of the village’s surplus if the public works department budget cannot cover it, does not represent the entire lighting cost for the stretch of sidewalk. That price tag would have been “more than we have in the budget,” Trustee Larry LaPointe said.
Instead the village will put in the eight streetlights, 150 feet apart, according to Garant. “Just to give it some light at this point in time, and then we can fill in as we continue to go.”
The streetlights will use LED bulbs.
The new roughly 0.2-mile sidewalk on Highlands Boulevard has been in the works for a while, with the idea first coming up a few years ago, when residents coordinated an effort to petition the government to preserve the village-owned grassy area along the road. It was discussed as a safety issue because pedestrians had to walk in the street to get from the condos to the uptown business district.
Board members approved a parkland designation for the 6-acre grassy parcel earlier this year, a move that limits the land’s future use or development. Village officials have discussed the possibility of adding benches or walking paths there, but have expressed a desire to keep the park’s use passive.
People at an anti-drug forum stay afterward to learn how to use the anti-overdose medication Narcan. Above, someone practices spraying into a dummy’s nostrils. Photo by Elana Glowatz
The Suffolk County Police Department handed out dozens of overdose rescue kits in the Port Jefferson high school on Monday night, at the conclusion of a crowded drug abuse prevention forum geared toward educating parents.
“We have to double-down on prevention,” said Tim Sini, a deputy county commissioner for public safety who has recently been nominated for police commissioner.
People at an anti-drug forum stay afterward to learn how to use the anti-overdose medication Narcan. Above, Jim Laffey assembles a syringe. Photo by Elana Glowatz
He and other officials from the police department, medical examiner’s office and community spoke at the forum to inform parents about the dangers of drug abuse, including how kids get introduced to and hooked on drugs in the first place. Much of the discussion focused on opioid drugs, which include heroin as well as prescription painkillers like Vicodin and Percocet, and on the lifesaving Narcan, an anti-overdose medication that blocks opioid receptors in the brain and can stop an overdose of those types of drugs.
According to Dr. Scott Coyne, the SCPD’s chief surgeon and medical director, in the three years since Suffolk officers have been trained to administer Narcan — the well-known brand name for naloxone — they have used it successfully 435 times.
Attendees who stayed after the forum were able to register in the police department’s public Narcan program and receive a kit with two doses of the medication, which can be sprayed into an overdose victim’s nostrils.
Narcan training classes are coming up Want to learn how to use Narcan, the medication that stops an opioid overdose in its tracks? Training courses are taking place across Suffolk County over the next couple of months, including in Port Jefferson and in neighboring Centereach.
Narcan, the brand name of naloxone, blocks receptors in the brain to stop overdoses of drugs like heroin, Vicodin, Percocet, OxyContin or Demerol, among others. It can be administered through a nasal spray and will not cause harm if mistakenly given to someone who is not suffering an opioid overdose.
The local training sessions meet state health requirements, according to the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, and will teach trainees to recognize opioid overdoses, to administer Narcan and to take other steps until emergency medical personnel arrive on the scene. All participants will receive a certificate of completion and an emergency kit that includes Narcan.
The first course will be held on Monday, Dec. 14, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the county’s Office of Health Education in Hauppauge, at 725 Veterans Highway, Building C928. RSVP to 631-853-4017 or [email protected].
In Centereach, a course will take place on Friday, Jan. 15, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Middle Country library at 101 Eastwood Blvd. RSVP before Jan. 11 at [email protected]or at 631-585-9393 ext. 213.
Later that month, Hope House Ministries will host another Narcan training session in its facility at 1 High St. in Port Jefferson, in the Sister Aimee Room. That event, held in conjunction with the Port Jefferson ambulance company, will take place on Thursday, Jan. 28, at 10 a.m. Call 631-928-2377 for more information or register at https://pjvac.enrollware.com/enroll?id=952865.
A Rocky Point woman was killed on Saturday evening after walking into the road, according to police.
The Suffolk County Police Department said a 2000 Chrysler Voyager hit 49-year-old Theresa Swedberg when the pedestrian walked into the car’s travel lane, as it was going north on Hallock Landing Road near 3rd Avenue.
Swedberg was pronounced dead at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson, police said, while the driver, a 21-year-old Miller Place resident, was not hurt in the crash.
Police impounded the Chrysler for a safety check.
Detectives from the SCPD’s 7th Squad are investigating the collision. Anyone with information is asked to call them at 631-852-8752.
An armed robber who restrains victims before stealing cash has hit another location in Suffolk County, according to police.
The suspect entered Beach Bum Tanning in Huntington Station on Friday night with a handgun and forced two employees to the back of the store and then restrained them, the Suffolk County Police Department said. The man then took cash from the shop’s drawers.
Neither female employee was injured in the incident, police said, and there were no customers in the East Jericho Turnpike store at the time of the robbery, at about 8:30 p.m. But the crime was a familiar one.
Police have already been on the hunt for the suspect, who followed a similar routine at the Huntington Station Pier 1 Imports, also on East Jericho, on Nov. 22. In that armed robbery, the suspect restrained employees and customers at the back of the store, then made an employee open the shop’s safe and took cash from the registers.
The two crimes were similar to those that have taken place across Long Island since late August, including four robberies at women’s clothing stores in Suffolk County: on Sept. 7 in East Farmingdale, on Oct. 12 in West Babylon, on Oct. 26 in Deer Park and on Nov. 2 in North Lindenhurst.
The suspect in all of the armed robberies is described as black, between 5 feet 10 inches and 6 feet tall, and of a thin to medium build, police said. During the Pier 1 robbery, he was wearing a mask and a hoodie, but police said he was wearing a scarf and a hat during the Beach Bum Tanning robbery.
Detectives from the SCPD’s Pattern Crime Unit are investigating the incident and Suffolk County Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $5,000 for information that leads to an arrest.
Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 800-220-TIPS.
A child was critically hurt while crossing the street on Saturday morning.
The Suffolk County Police Department said an 11-year-old girl was walking across Main Street in Kings Park at 11 a.m. that day when a van struck her. That van had been heading east and had just passed Thompson Street at the time of the crash.
The girl was in critical condition at Stony Brook University Hospital, police said, while the van’s driver, a 52-year-old Freeport man, was not injured.
Police impounded the van for a safety check and detectives from the 4th Squad are investigating the crash.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call them at 631-854-8452.
A man has pleaded guilty to murdering his girlfriend outside their apartment and then firing on officers in a subsequent standoff, during which he held his two children hostage.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office announced on Wednesday that Jose C. Rodriguez will soon be sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for his two charges, second-degree murder and attempted aggravated murder of a police officer.
At the time of the shooting, in November 2013, the Suffolk County Police Department said officers responding to several 911 calls about hearing gunshots found a woman, 36-year-old Kimberly Sellitto, lying on the front lawn of the apartment in the Brookwood at Ridge complex, off of Middle Country Road. They moved her body to safety, but authorities later determined she was dead from a gunshot wound to the head.
Rodriguez, who is now 34, fired several shotgun rounds at those responding officers while he was barricaded in the apartment with his two children, the DA’s office said.
Emergency Service Section and Hostage Negotiation Team officers got Rodriguez to release his two children, police said at the time. Later on, the man fired multiple rifle rounds at officers.
None of the officers were hurt, police said, but bullets struck an armored SCPD vehicle.
The officers fired back, also not injuring Rodriguez. The man subsequently surrendered and was taken into custody, a couple of hours after the incident began.
The children were not hurt, and were released to the custody of their mother. Sellitto was pronounced dead at the scene.
Although Rodriguez originally pleaded not guilty to the charges and has been remanded to jail since the murder, he pleaded guilty during a pretrial hearing in Riverhead this week, the DA’s office said. He was scheduled to be sentenced in State Supreme Court to 30 years to life in prison on Jan. 8.
Police said a Long Island man was not using a mandated anti-drunk driving device on his car when he struck a pedestrian in a parking lot on Wednesday night, seriously injuring her.
Interlock devices prevent a car from operating unless a sober person breathes into them, and the Suffolk County Police Department said 24-year-old Keylor Laporta did not have one in the 2011 Dodge Ram 1500 he was driving in the Huntington Station Target’s parking lot at the time of the incident.
Police did not specify why Laporta was mandated to use an interlock device or whether his blood alcohol level was tested at the site of Wednesday night’s crash, in which Laporta struck 68-year-old Teresa Kochan, a West Hills resident, in the lot off of East Jericho Turnpike.
Kochan sustained head injuries, police said, and was in serious condition at Huntington Hospital. Laporta, a Huntington Station resident, was not injured.
The man was charged with using a vehicle without an interlock device, a misdemeanor.
According to the New York State court system’s online database, Laporta also has two vehicle infractions against him in connection with the incident, operating an unregistered vehicle and failing to change an address on a license.
Attorney information for the defendant was not immediately available. He was scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday.
Police impounded the Dodge for a safety check.
Anyone with information is asked to call the SCPD’s 2nd Squad, whose detectives are investigating the case, at 631-854-8252.
Police arrested a homeless man for sexual assault on Tuesday night, after he allegedly attacked a taxi driver on a trip that started at a local hospital.
The Suffolk County Police Department said that the female cab driver picked up her passenger at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson that evening, but during the trip he assaulted her and the taxi crashed into a fence on Mount Sinai-Coram Road in Mount Sinai. The suspect, 34-year-old registered sex offender Francis Barrios, then sexually assaulted the driver.
Police did not release the name of the taxi company, to protect the identity of the victim.
Officers had initially responded to the crash scene when a passing motorist called 911, according to police, but the responders arrested Barrios after further investigation. He was charged with first-degree criminal sexual act, first-degree attempted rape, second-degree strangulation and third-degree assault.
Attorney information for Barrios was not immediately available and he could not be reached for comment. He was held overnight and scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday.
Prev
