A few more details in the attempted robbery turned shoot-out in Crown Heights. The store's owner, Youssouf Drame, was unarmed; the NY Times reports he "wrested a gun away from one of the men and fatally shot two of them." Employee Drummond Bignott, who was pistol-whipped (Drame was also pistol-whipped but grabbed the man's gun), told Newsday, "He took the guy's gun. Everyone started shooting. He saved my life." Drame, who was shot in the......

The Washington Square News, NYU's student paper, has a juicy article showing how their university artificially deflates campus crime stats by classifying 87% of its residence hall population as "off campus." The exposé sensationally notes that if you're a student who "gets murdered in Rubin residence hall, you were killed off-campus. You missed the cutoff by three blocks." Because it receives federal funds, NYU is required by law to publish its annual crime statistics, but......

According to the NY Post, police are investigating whether 14-year-old Sabrina Matthews "may have been killed by a boyfriend she recently met over the Internet." Matthews was found by her father in their Cambria Heights home on Sunday; her throat was slit and she was naked from the waist down. The Daily News reports that her father was arrested last year for punching an older daughter; neighbors say the police had come to the Matthews......

Yesterday afternoon, a 14-year-old girlwas discovered by her father in their Cambria Heights home in Queens. Sabrina Matthews was "naked from the waist down, with blood gushing from a wound to her throat," in her bedroom, according to the Daily News. The paramedics were unable to revive her. A neighbor, VIncent Oakley, told the NY Times the father, who went to his house after calling for help, was "crying and...totally out of it," after finding......

17-year-old Ali Kamara, a black Muslim, was walking home on Staten Island Tuesday night after it was announced that Barack Obama was elected president when he was brutally assaulted by four white men. Kamara tells the Daily News: "I see the car coming. They looked at me and said, 'Obama!' They were not happy. They had hoodies on. They started hitting me with bats and my body started vibrating." Luckily, Kamara was able to break......

While the police said rumors of gang-related Halloween slashings were unfounded, last night did have its share of fatal violence. The Daily News reports that two men died and others were injured from three shootings and four stabbings around the city. A 22-year-old man was leaving his aunt's house on Tapscott Street in Brownsville at 9 p.m. when he was "fatally stabbed twice in the groin." Tyreik Davis, a FedEx employee, had just finished dinner;......

Terrible trick: Police say that three men, wearing Halloween costumes, robbed a Merrick home. When the owner, whose wife and child were not home, opened the door, the robbers made their way in and struck him on the head. A police officer said, "As he opened his door, he saw he was about to be rushed, and he is rushed by Superman and two people who were following him." One of the robbers also showed......

Earlier this morning the body of a boy believed to be 7-year-old Julian King, Jennifer Hudson's nephew, was found in a vehicle now being identified as the 1994 white Chevrolet Suburban that was tied with the shooting of Hudson's mother and brother last week. The Chicago Tribune has more details--and while an official ID hasn't been made, TMZ notes that the Amber Alert for King has been called off. This weekend Hudson had offered up......

More details on the Asian organized crime arrests from yesterday: The Post reports (with the headline "FEDS' KUNG POW") that the feds "broke up a vicious Chinatown gang that allegedly inflicted brutal beatings to muscle in on private bus and van companies." The gang, the "Banya Organization" with gang members named Fatty, Big Flower, and Vegetable Duck, tried to "extort partial ownership" and profits from two unnamed discount bus companies. The gang, also accused of......

Is the economic free fall already leading to higher crime and degentrifying neighborhoods, as previously speculated? Brooklyn's 88th precinct, which includes Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, is reporting that so far this year robberies have spiked 7.6 percent and burglaries are up 18.6 percent. And a cardboard box of bloody human remains discovered on fancy Washington Park isn't exactly putting residents at ease; one of them tells The Brooklyn Paper, “This hasn’t happened since the......

Days after seven Columbia University students were attacked near campus, the police have announced four arrests. Surveillance cameras captured possible suspects who apparently struck at five different locations. According to WNBC, "the suspects as 16-year old DeShaun Busby, 16-year-old Quentin Cox, 17-year-old Lawrence Jones and 18-year-old Jan Germosen" and "all face charges of gang assault." The police are continuing to look for other suspects.......

The Columbia Spectator reported that Columbia University's Office of Public Safety issued an alert (though not all students received it) about seven students being assaulted on last Sunday night near campus: "Though the alert...offered no information about whether the assaults might be connected, it did provide some consistent detail. Each of the students was physically assaulted and reported 'being approached and/or surrounded by a group of five to seven' males in their twenties." One......

The Times went around fretfully asking experts and 'men on the street' whether the economic downturn is going to lead to higher crime. The consensus? Well, it couldn't hurt to get renter's insurance, and hide those iPod earbuds as you stroll home through your increasingly blighted neighborhood. While this isn't an exact science, the article does draw some persuasive parallels between today's meltdown and the crime explosion that followed the 1987 Wall Street crash, as......

Perhaps to no one's surprise, the Tuesday morning armored car robbery was planned by an employee of the armored car company. An off-duty Dunbar Armored Car guard Robert Blackmon was arrested in the $330,000 robbery, after surveillance footage apparently showed his figure waiting in the vestibule of an M&T Bank location in Kips Bay. Police say that Blackmon grabbed fellow Dunbar employee Janell Nelson, who was carrying bags of cash from the bank to the......

A woman returned to her Crown Heights home and made a devastating discovery: Her 16-year-old daughter was lying in a pool of blood, stabbed in the face and neck. Shannon Braithwaite was pronounced dead at the scene yesterday afternoon. WCBS 2 reports the teen, who had the day off for the Rosh Hashanah holiday, was waiting for her mother to return home, "so they could cash her final paycheck from her summer job at the......

A man suspected of mugging a deaf 83-year-old woman surrendered to police yesterday. The Post reports that 21-year-old Anthony Jackson now faces assault and robbery charges after attacking Elsie Barretto, who was leaving her Upper East Side building's elevator. Barretto, standing five feet tall, did put up a fight, but suffered a black eye, broken dentures, and cuts to her mouth; her pants were also ripped (Jackson was really trying to get her money). The......

Nine people were arrested for allegedly smuggling cocaine inside children's toy packaging. NY1 reports that "four kilograms of cocaine, four handguns, and more than $86,000" during the investigation. The suspects pleaded not guilty to charges including drug possession and money laundering; a prosecutor said, "We're investigating whether they were paid in cocaine." One employee worked in a check-cashing facility, and it's believed he laundered hundreds of thousands of dollars there, and the ringleader allegedly wired......

The suspect who allegedly struck Pelagio De La Cruz seven times in the head with a bat during a late-night robbery in the Bronx has turned himself over to police. Jamal Roman, 26, was arrested yesterday after being identified by his accomplice, 20-year-old Gavin Scott, who surrendered earlier, accompanied by his grandmother. Scott was captured on a surveillance video rifling through De La Cruz's pockets after Roman allegedly beat the victim outside a University Heights......

One suspect has turned himself in to police in the Bronx in connection with the brutal beating of Pelagio De La Cruz, a Boston-area radio talk show host who was visiting his children in University Heights. Police say relatives convinced 20-year-old Gavin Scott to turn himself over to police last night after a widely-circulated surveillance tape showed an unidentified assailant who accompanied Scott savagely beating De La Cruz seven times with a bat outside his......

The NYPD released really disturbing surveillance footage showing two men beating a man outside a Bronx apartment building. According to the NY Post, the victim is Pelagio de La Cruz, a Boston-area radio talk show host on WESX who was visiting his children in University Heights. He was returning to their apartment building around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, after having a few drinks at a nearby restaurant.As de la Cruz stood at the door of......

The music has stopped at McCarren Park Pool, the hipsters have moved on to other concrete pastures, and it looks like crooks have been taking advantage of the area. The Brooklyn Paper has two accounts of recent muggings, reporting that "a thug shoved a woman and stole her purse at around 2 am...he threw her to the ground and warned, 'If you don’t stop struggling I’m really gonna hurt you.'" That same day someone attacked......

Board up your windshields and lock yourself in the trunk: The squeegee men—those Giuliani-era poster boys for quality-of-life crime—are making a comeback according to the Post, which has an alarming article about the "pests." Of which there are four. But be afraid! They're congregating near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, and a Hells Kitchen elevator manager tells the tabloid, "They get very aggressive. I was like, 'Dude, don't even think about it!'" The Post......

The Yonkers police officer accused of throwing a woman onto a restaurant floor is saying that he did so because the woman was drunk and interfering with police. Irma Marquez is suing Yonkers police for $11 million for being body-slammed face-first into a tile floor by veteran officer Wayne Simoes last year. Marquez was in the hospital for days with a broken jaw and intense bruising on her face. She says she was attacked while......

After two and a half months sharing a seven-and-a-half-by-eight-foot concrete cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, accused con man Raffaello Follieri will plead guilty tomorrow to federal charges of wire fraud and money laundering, the AP reports. The Italian entrepreneur was supposedly dumped by Anne Hathaway the night before his arrest; friends of his have since suggested that Hathaway—who had been involved with Follieri's foundation—may have lured Follieri back to New York from Italy to......

A Shih Tzu named Zahara lost its life last September because a man was angry at his girlfriend and their relationship, and the authorities have finally caught up with him. WNBC reports that 27-year-old Sherman Haynes "threw his girlfriend's small dog out his third-floor window, killing the defenseless animal," yelling, "You need your dog?" to his girlfriend, 25-year-old Farah Benoit. The couple were at his East 93rd Street apartment in Brooklyn, where he also threw......

The man who broke into Kirsten Dunst's hotel room in the SoHo Grand last August, Jarrod Beinerman, is now headed for jail. The NY Post reports that he's been sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison after being arrested on burglary and larceny charges, though "he was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of attempted burglary." All in all Dunst had her iPod, cameras, wallets, purses and cash taken from her. Since the......

Last month the massive amounts of smashed car window glass on Water Street in DUMBO got some attention online, and a blog of its own. Across the cobblestone street from some of the victimized cars a sign appeared on a wall saying the culprit was likely Darren Stone, aka Squarehead. Now the The NY Post reports that the 43-year-old Stone has been arrested for felony criminal mischief after cops used DNA evidence from one break-in......

John Gotti Jr., who was recently arrested by the feds on charges of murder and drug running, pleaded not guilty in a Florida court. Though the murders were allegedly in NY, he is being prosecuted in Florida because prosecutors say the Gambino crime family was "trying to gain a foothold" in Tampa. Which his lawyers are trying to change, saying, "The events happened in New York, and it's a disadvantage to transfer everything here." Prosecutors......

All has been silent on the stabby front in the South Side of Williamsburg. Metro now takes a look at the incidents, which have been going on since April of this year, and have often involved machetes (possibly wielded by the gang called Trinitarios). The paper reports that the 90th Precinct has "experienced the sharpest rise in crime since last year of any neighborhood in Brooklyn," coming in at 13.49% (as a comparison, the 94th......

Early yesterday morning, an 18-year-old woman was attacked in the Richmond Hill section of Queens. WABC 7 reports the woman had been walking down a street when an man wielding a gun "took her to the back of a building where she was robbed and sexually assaulted." According to the Daily News, the victim ran back home and "hysterically pointed out her attacker to [her boyfriend] and his friends." The group tried to chase the......