Results tagged “teen”

This is a pretty crazy time to be a teenager in the Bronx. Another adolescent was gunned down this weekend — this time fatally — with a bullet meant for someone else.

The family of Vada Vasquez, the 15-year-old Bronx girl who took a stray bullet to the skull last Monday, declined their usual Thanksgiving feast this year, postponing it until the teen can eat again. But the five young men accused of involvement in the shooting were given a seemingly generous Thanksgiving meal in jail yesterday. Dinner included turkey with dressing, yams, steamed greens and carrot cake!

The family of the 15-year-old girl who took a stray bullet to the skull last Monday has something incredible to be thankful for today: doctors expect the teen to make a full recovery. After performing brain surgery to remove the bullet from Vada Vasquez's skull, doctors put her in medically-induced coma and cautioned relatives that she would most likely suffer some degree of brain damage. But now surgeon Narayan Sundaresan believes that although the bullet damaged her left temporal lobe, the area of the brain responsible for speech, she still "can make a full recovery."

Yesterday, tween singing sensation (or so Wikipedia leads us to believe) Justin Bieber was scheduled to make an appearance at the Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island. Apparently the 15-year-old's fans were really excited to see him, because thousands flocked to the mall, forcing the police to cancel the event. Newsday says that "a crowd of 3,000 young girls and their parents started aggressively pushing and shoving."

A 16-year-old boy has confessed to the Monday afternoon shooting that left a Bronx girl in a medically-induced coma. Carvett Gentles, a sophomore at Bronx Leadership Academy who rarely attended class, had no criminal record before this week, and police believe that's why the .40-caliber pistol used in the shooting was passed to him, in a street version of "hot potato." The four other young men who were with him Monday afternoon all have extensive arrest records, and those boys—also members of a Bloods gang spin-off called "Gorilla Stone Blood"—passed the gun around until it ended up in Gentles's hands.

Police have arrested five young men allegedly involved in the altercation that led to the shooting of innocent bystander Vada Vasquez, a 15-year-old Bronx girl who was chatting with a friend after school Monday afternoon when a stray bullet struck her in the head, shattering inside her skull. She is currently in critical condition and on a ventilator. The bullets were directed at Tyrone Creighton, 19, who was hit in the back as he fled five men who had confronted him outside a bodega near Bronx Latin School. Police believe revenge was the motive.

A Staten Island teenager is in critical condition after she was run over in a chain reaction car crash in front of Tottenville High School yesterday. At around 11:30 am, a Nissan Maxima stopped to allow 17-year-old senior Janine Brawer to cross Luten Avenue. But as she crossed the street, a Saturn rear-ended the Nissan and pushed the car into the teen, pinning her beneath it. Rescue workers extracted Brawer — who suffered cardiac arrest during the collision — and transported her to Staten Island University Hospital, where she underwent surgery and remains in "grave condition," according to police.

The father of a 14-year-old Connecticut girl filed a missing persons report with police after his daughter left the house Saturday morning and didn't come home that night. The unidentified girl wasn't answering her cellphone, but police were able to track her down using her the phone's signal, finally locating her Sunday afternoon in a room at the Belleclaire Hotel on the Upper West Side. Inside the room, police found condoms, a vibrator, and an 18-year-old Belgian man named Anthony Freson, who swears the girl told him she was 18 when they "met" in a Yahoo chat room in April.

The story of the 13-year-old who jumped to his death from his Mosholu Parkway apartment building keeps getting more tragic. The Bronx teen's mother — who was cooking dinner for her son when he took his own life — saw him take his fatal leap, the Daily News reports.

Yesterday afternoon, a 13-year-old jumped to his death from his family's apartment terrace at the Tracey Towers on Mosholu Parkway. The Daily News reports that Juda Agyemang "was sent home from school for not paying attention" (according to family members) while the Post says he had been "pulled from his school's basketball team because of poor grades."

A Bronx cop shot a teenager in the face after the adolescent reached for a BB gun on Holland Avenue yesterday afternoon. A plainclothes narcotics detective fired on 15-year-old Marcus Bonner at around 5 pm, hitting the aspiring rapper in the cheek after he made a move for the authentic-looking gun. "He makes like he's putting his hands up to surrender," a police source told the Daily News. "It's a fake surrender and he reaches for his gun."

One day in September 2008, Queens High School student Stephen Cruz suffered a lacerated forehead when school safety agent Daniel O’Connell, without provocation, allegedly kicked open a restroom stall that Stephen was using. Cruz claims that after he tumbled to the floor bleeding from his head, O'Connell (whom the students called RoboCop) walked away saying, "That's life; it will stop bleeding." Typical robot.

Over the weekend, officials announced that they had identified the teenager who was found wandering in Times Square with near-total amnesia. She is 18-year-old Kacie Aleece Peterson of Hansville, Washington, who was first reported missing on October 2nd. But detectives in Washington found bank activity and other evidence that she was alive and getting by, so they did not issue an Amber Alert. Her father Henry Peterson is flying to NYC today, and he says his daughter has experienced amnesia before.

A few days ago, city agencies asked for the public's help in identifying a teen girl found wandering in Times Square, because the girl could not remember anything about her past, save some recollections about a fantasy novel and writing some fantasy fiction. Now, a tipster has led police to believe she is a missing 18-year-old from Washington State.

A teenage girl has been taken in by the Administration for Children's Services after she was found wandering Times Square with near-total amnesia around midnight on October 9th. The girl, who is probably between 14 and 17, is 5-foot-6, medium build, light complexion, short, with straight blonde hair and blue eyes. She has pretty much zero recollection of her past, and has said, "I just want to know who I am. I want to know who I am, and what happened to me." But there are only a couple obscure clues to her identity.

A Manhattan teenager with no criminal record is suing the city for $1 million because cops arrested and taunted him as "Plaxico Burress" after he got shot in a robbery. Christian Dudley doesn't even own a gun, but that didn't matter to the officers who collared him after the Harlem mugging earlier this year. He was arrested in a Washington Heights hospital where he was waiting to get the bullet removed from the back of his knee—instead of surgery, he got dragged to the precinct on a charge of criminal possession of a weapon. And that's where the fun really started.

It's common for boring female grownups to dress up as slutty nurses/schoolgirls/nuns or whatever on Halloween, but now pre-teens are mimicking their airhead elders, and there's a whole range of sexually provocative costumes on sale for pre-pubescent girls. The retail chain Party City is well-stocked with everything to make this Halloween a happy one for pedophiles, from a pirate costume for 8-year-olds dubbed the "High Seas Hottie" to a "Devil Grrrl" costume that comes with a red miniskirt, fishnets, a tiny pitchfork, and the sales pitch: "This grrrl devil likes to get things heating up!" It gets creepier...

A 17-year-old boy was reportedly shot in the back by NYPD officers patrolling the Gouverneur Morris Houses in the Bronx last night around 9:30. Police say they spotted Peter Colon carrying a .22-caliber gun in a stairwell of the housing project, and when a female officer reached for the gun, Colon fought back. The Daily News, which reports Colon's age as 19, says the teen hit the female cop in the face and pointed the gun at her. At that point, her partner then shot at Colon twice, hitting him once in the back.

Yesterday police arrested a special education teacher for the Bronx School Of Science Inquiry and Investigation at M.S. 331, charging him with rape and sexual misconduct. Teacher Bill Agosto, 26, is charged with third degree rape and sexual misconduct for allegedly carrying on a year-long sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl, who was not a student at M.S. 331. Police sources tell the Daily News the relationship was consensual, and resulted in the girl getting pregnant. The affair allegedly began when he worked at a different school as a track coach.

Threatening to kill people like President Obama and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly isn't what made Crank Yankers a hit. On Sunday afternoon, police arrested 18-year-old Bronx teen Jonathan Avalos for calling 911 five times that morning and making the threats. Police sources tell the Daily News he's undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, because standing outside an Obama event with a gun is one thing, but crank calls will not be tolerated.

A Bronx teen is suing a wedding hall and bridal shop for using an unauthorized photo of her and her uncle in ads that made them seem like newlyweds. The lawsuit filed by the family of 17-year-old Katelyn Aviles accuses the Sanz catering hall and Margie's Bridal in the Bronx of causing her "severe and serious injuries and damages" by using the photo, which wasn't even taken at Sanz! It was snapped at her sweet 16 birthday party, and Aviles's lawyer speculates that the photographer is affiliated with Sanz. Aviles says she knew nothing about the ad until friends began teasing her about a modeling career. "When I got to school, everyone is looking at me different, talking about me, whispering," she tells the Daily News. "A few of the girls I hang out with were saying, 'You think you're all that.' " The ad appeared on a postcard, which friends found in a stack in the foyer of an IHOP. Now some call her the "IHOP girl," and Aviles feels "violated." She tells the Post, "One person said, 'Who's that, your boyfriend?' I did a double take and said, 'What are you, serious? That's my uncle.' He basically raised me."

A 15-year-old Brooklyn boy was arrested yesterday after accidentally shooting himself in the penis. The Post's stupid headline is, "So much for packing a, um, rod," and there are going to be plenty of bad jokes about going off half-cocked in the comments, but we can't help but pity the kid. Khamir Grant told cops he was walking home from Amersfort Park in East Flatbush around 1:30 a.m. Sunday with a gun in his waistband when the piece began to slip into his pants. When Grant grabbed for it, he accidentally pulled the trigger, firing a bullet "right through his penis," in the Post's words. Grant staggered home, told his mother what happened, and they took a livery car to Kings County Hospital, where Grant was released after treatment and then arrested. He's charged with reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon—the same charges levied against Plaxico Burress, who last year shot himself in a nightclub under similar circumstances, albeit with less catastrophic results.

Teens will be teens, punching friends while someone else films them so the video can be posted to YouTube. Only this time, the puncher was arrested. According to WCBS880, an argument over a video game controller escalated into an incident where 17-year old Ryan Cody beat up a 16-year old boy in the Massapequa Preserve. Cody was arrested for second-degree assault. Nassau County Police Sgt. Anthony Repalone said, "We have a 17-year old who is being charged with a felony assault. You have a 16-year-old victim who had severe injuries to his face, recquiring additional surgery. The fact that they videotaped this and put it on for entertainment is disheartening, to say the least."

An underage gambler has cost the Atlantic City Hilton Casino over $115,000—the second-largest fine for underage gambling in the city's 31-year history of casino gaming. (Last year Bally's Atlantic City was slapped with a record-setting $157,500 fine for letting an underage customer gamble; the legal age there is 21.) The Hilton's teenage gambler, identified only as "M.R." by the gaming commission, was granted a player's account at the Hilton in 2007 and even given a free room. He was 19 at the time, but gave fake identification indicating he was 24. During the next 16 months, "M.R." traveled repeatedly to A.C. from Brooklyn, and in February 2008, he was arrested at a different casino for underage gambling. Still, the Hilton didn't know his real age until April 2008, when the Gaming Enforcement Division found a record for "M.R." at the Hilton, and notified the casino. But the next day, the casino permitted him to gamble some more, for nearly three hours. Linda Kassekert, chairwoman of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, tells the AP, "We have a big concern about it because kids can make themselves look older, and that's problematic." Especially if they get lucky.

Cheyenne Jeudy's parents had been meticulously planning her $50,000 sweet sixteen birthday party for two years, but what they didn't plan for was the appearance of a group of drunken, unruly party crashers from a wedding reception held in another part of the catering hall. According to a lawsuit filed by Cheyenne's mother Denise, a NYC cop, the party turned ugly because Russo's on the Bay, a Howard Beach catering hall, didn't stop the party crashers from molesting young girls at the Sweet 16, nor from beating up her nephew outside.

He's confessed to participating in a string of armed robberies in Queens, but the young model who made headlines because of his adolescent affair with a 37-year-old teacher insists there's no reason he can't go from perp-walking to cat-walking. Joshua Walter, now 20, seemed to be in denial when a Post reporter visited him at the Vernon C. Bain jail barge moored off The Bronx, where he's being held in lieu of $550,000 bail. After first telling the reporter, "I got nothing to say to you," he took the tabloid's bait when pressed about his modeling career, asking, "What do you mean? What happened? I still am modeling." Walter, along with three others, faces robbery and weapon-possession charges in connection with the June 14th through July 12th crime spree. And in May, Walter pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct for punching and choking his older lover, former teacher Gina Salamino. As for his career, one modeling industry publicist tells the Post, "I wouldn't count him out, but a lot will depend on how he reacts and what he does now that he's in trouble. America loves a great comeback story." True, but America loves a great thieving thug goes to prison story, too.

Remember Joshua Walter, the teen fashion model from Queens who made headlines last fall after his 37-year-old lover, a former teacher, sued the city for firing her over their affair? He's back in the news, and if you recall the way he dealt with tabloid reporters outside his house in November— "You want to see assault? Turn that thing off!"—you won't be too surprised by the latest turn of events. Walter, now 20 and a dad, was arrested late Wednesday night with three others and charged with robbing 15 gas stations and delis in Queens and Greenpoint. According to the Post, they all confessed. The spree began June 14th and ended on Sunday at a Dunkin' Donuts on Horace Harding Expressway, where Walter allegedly pistol-whipped one of the victims. Police spotted the crew around 1:30 a.m. Thursday in a maroon Chevy Astro van matching the description of the getaway car; after being pulled over the young men ran but were quickly apprehended, and a .380-caliber automatic handgun was found in the van. Approached by the Daily News outside her Queens home, Walter's poor mother shouted, "I got something to say: Leave my family alone!"

To paraphrase Mel Brooks, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when a Staten Island teen falls down an open manhole while text-messaging." 15-year-old Alexa Longueira was walking with a friend around 5 p.m. yesterday and was about to send a text when she felt the ground give way: "She literally just handed me the phone and I opened it [and] I felt this big drop. It was four or five feet, it was very painful. I kind of crawled out and the DEP guys came running and helped me. ... They were just, like, 'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!'" Longueira got some scrapes on her arms and back (pictured), but doctors are concerned about possible spine damage and want a follow-up MRI. A DEP spokesperson says workers left the manhole momentarily to retrieve cones from the truck and expressed "regret." But Alexa's mother is determined to sue the city, and argues that it doesn't matter whether Alexa was texting or not; the manhole shouldn't have been left open. She tells the Staten Island Advance that even though the sewer wasn't full, "Oh my God, it was putrid. One of her sneakers is still down there."

A Westchester County middle school social studies teacher and former lacrosse coach has a $500 a week crack addiction and a penchant for underage girls, prosecutors say. Gregg Cavaluzzi, who has taught at six schools (some in NYC) over the last decade but was recently dismissed from Pelham Middle School, was caught in a sting by cops posing as 15-year-old girls in online chat rooms. Thinking an undercover cop was a teen, he allegedly texted, "At a motel in Bronx partying you smoke? Can you get down here" and asked what's "one thing you like to do very dirty." Cavaluzzi was busted when he showed up in Elmsford, NY, for the rendezvous and was charged with enticing a minor for sex, which could get him up to life in prison if convicted. A previous student of Cavaluzzi tells CBS2, "[The girls] used to talk about how he was such a pervert and they all found it very disgusting. He might look at different body parts thinking the girls wouldn't notice but everybody noticed." Cavaluzzi denies the charges; his lawyer says his client suffers from depression and cocaine addiction.

A Brooklyn teen killed another youth in a Mill Basin jet ski accident almost three years ago, then sped away without trying to help the victim, prosecuters argued in court yesterday. You may recall that Aristotle Plagianakos, who was 16 at the time, was arrested in connection with Paul Zaccaria's death in 2006. It took investigators a month to find Zaccaria's body in the water, and now Plagianakos is charged with manslaughter and trying to cover up the death by telling friends, "It wasn't us, if anybody asks."