Updates on Sandy, Plane Crash; Statewide News
As assault and robbery victim Michael Sandy lay in a coma in a Brooklyn hospital Thursday, his family and friends continued to pray for his unlikely recovery, faced with the agonizing decision of whether to remove him from life-support systems on the day he would mark his 29th birthday.
Sandy is the Black gay Williamsburg man, apparently lured to a public park rendezvous through an Internet website by four White men who allegedly robbed and beat him. He was subsequently hit by a car and left unconscious as he attempted to flee across the Belt Parkway.
Three of the men, John Fox, 19, Gary Timmins, 16, and Ilye Shurov, 20, have been charged with assault and attempted robbery during the commission of a hate crime. They have been arraigned and are being held at Rikers Island without bail. Charges still might be filed against Anthony Fortunato, 20, who was questioned and released, police sources said. All four suspects are from Sheepshead Bay. Police are also looking for the driver of the car that hit Sandy.
More is now known about the flight instructor traveling with New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle when the two crashed a fixed wing private plane into an upper East Side Manhattan condominium Wednesday.
Tyler Stanger, 26, who like Lidle was from California, was described as a skilled, knowledgeable pilot, mechanic and flight instructor who had been hanging around air fields since he was a kid. Friends say he was a safety-conscious pilot who demonstrated maturity beyond his years.
However he was inexperienced flying around New York City, where a maze of regulations separate private non-commercial airplanes, commuter and business helicopters and commercial flights at LaGuardia and JFK airports, and keep airplanes from traveling over densely populated areas like the island of Manhattan. Stanger reportedly had only made one previous flight over New York airspace.
Seventy-five miles up the Hudson River, in Poughkeepsie, a replica of the slave ship The Amistad docked there Thursday on an educational tour designed to teach the history of the slave rebellion that took place in 1838. Fifty-three slaves, captured in Sierra Leone, overtook the ship’s crew and sailed for 56 days before ending up off Montauk, Long Island, recaptured by the U.S. Navy and charged with piracy and murder.
Abolitionists, including former President John Quincy Adams who offered legal representation, came to their defense. Their case was tried successfully before the United States Supreme Court where in 1841, the court upheld the slaves’ right to freedom and ordered them released.
Finally, up in the Western corner of the state, 105 miles of the New York State Thruway are closed this morning due to a record October snow storm. Two feet of snow fell overnight, downing trees, and knocking out power to 230,000 people.
Lake effect snow, caused by cold Canadian wind blowing over warm Lake Erie, is falling from Buffalo to Rochester's western suburbs.
Posted by bernie at October 13, 2006 10:05 AM