Career homeless services bureaucrat DSS Commissioner quits and runs away from the city's homeless crisis

NY1

While appearing on “Inside City Hall” on Tuesday night, Gary Jenkins, the city’s Department of Social Services commissioner who oversees the troubled homeless shelter system, announced his resignation.

The commissioner's move comes as the city is grappling with an affordable housing crisis and influx of asylum seekers that has put pressure on the shelter system.

He told his staff earlier in the day of his impending resignation earlier Tuesday.

“I’ve decided to step down from my position as Commissioner for the Department of Social Services and explore other opportunities that have been presented to me," Jenkins said on "Inside City Hall."

Jenkins' final day is March 3 and leaves the embattled department after only serving for a year. Mayor Eric Adams first appointed Jenkins in January of 2022.

His portfolio includes overseeing the Department of Homeless Services and the city’s Human Resources Administration. 

“There’s no discord, there’s no running away. This was something that was already planned," Jenkins said. “I’m just going to take some time off. Decompress and spend some quality time with my family and get back into this in the month of April.” 

Adams recently said that going into his first year in office, the city’s shelter system had about 45,000 New Yorkers in its care. Meanwhile, close to 40,000 migrants have come to New York from the southern border with over 26,000 asylum seekers still in the city’s care. 

In a statement on Tuesday, the mayor thanked the commissioner for his nearly 40-year career in public service including helping an estimated 1,100 unsheltered New Yorkers under the Mayor’s subway safety plan. 

"Commissioner Jenkins also brought his own experience living in a shelter as a child to the job, a unique understanding of the struggles families in shelters face and a steadfast commitment to treating all of our clients with dignity and care. I'm incredibly grateful to Gary for his decades of service and wish him the very best in his next chapter,” added the Mayor. 

While in office, Jenkins faced a series of scandals including leaving the city in August amid the start of the migrant crisis. 

Jenkins also faced scrutiny after firing a spokeswoman over an alleged cover-up of department violations related to migrant families sleeping at an intake shelter in The Bronx. The incident violated the city’s right to shelter law. 

Adams defended Jenkins in both instances, at one point saying that he had the “utmost confidence” in the commissioner. 

Jenkins previously served as first deputy commissioner of HRA where he started his career holding numerous positions.

A few hours later...

NY Post

A migrant tried to commit suicide at the city’s new shelter in Brooklyn on Tuesday, police said.

The 26-year-old man was found suffering from self-inflicted stab wounds inside the recently opened shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal around 2:15 p.m., cops said.

The man used a shaving razor to cut his right forearm in one of the bathrooms of the housing facility, sources said. He was taken to Lutheran in stable condition.

The Cruise Terminal mega-shelter opened in late January and houses up to 1,000 single adult migrant men.

Last week, advocates and migrants who had been housed at Manhattan’s Watson Hotel protested the city’s decision to relocate single men to the Redhook facility to make room at the hotel for migrant families with children.

Dozens of migrants had camped outside the Hell’s Kitchen hotel in protest for two nights following Adams’ announcement, with activists claiming the new Brooklyn shelter would not provide the single men the same services they had been receiving.

And in one of his final actions as DSS Commissioner, Jenkins and Mayor Adams bails out a bankrupt tower hotel to shelter thousands of migrants, since the Brooklyn Terminal isn't working out so well.

NY Post

New York City is converting the world’s tallest Holiday Inn hotel into the Big Apple’s sixth mega-shelter for its surging migrant population, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.

The deal will supply 492 rooms for adult families and single women, Adams said in a statement.

“With more than 44,000 asylum seekers arriving in the last 10 months alone, we have helped provide shelter and support to nearly as many asylum seekers as the number of New Yorkers we already had in our shelter system when we first came into office,” he said.

Terms of the contract weren’t announced, but The Post reported last month that the owner of the 50-story hotel in Manhattan’s Financial District had an agreement in place to charge NYC Health + Hospitals a nightly rate of $190 per room.

At full capacity, that would amount to $93,500 a day, or an estimated $10.5 billion through May 1, 2024.

Details of the pact were contained in court documents tied to bankruptcy proceedings involving the hotel, owned by Chinese developer Jubao Xie, which is saddled with debts that include $11 million in interest on loans.

Duck sauce killer possessed gun while under house arrest, used it to commit suicide

QNS 

Glenn Hirsch, the man charged in the April 30 murder of a Chinese food delivery man in Forest Hills, committed suicide on Friday morning, Aug. 5, just before he was set to appear in court, his attorney confirmed with QNS. He was 51 years old.

Hirsch’s body was discovered in his apartment by police at approximately 10:06 a.m. Hirsch’s attorney confirmed with QNS that Hirsch had shot himself.

Hirsch had allegedly been upset with the restaurant that the delivery worker, Zhiwen Yan, worked for, The Great Wall Restaurant in Forest Hills. There was a feud over duck sauce that led to the murder, earning Hirsch the moniker “Duck Sauce Killer.”

He allegedly stalked and harassed workers from the restaurant. Hirsch was seen on surveillance video during the night of April 30 allegedly driving by the restaurant after dropping his wife off at work. He had passed by the restaurant seven times before Yan left the restaurant to make a delivery at around 9:30 p.m. Hirsch followed him as he made the delivery. When Yan stopped at a red light at 67th Drive and 108th Street after completing the delivery, Hirsch approached Yan and shot him in the chest, according to authorities. Yan had died as a result of a single gunshot wound. He was 45.

Queens is still burning...

 

 Sunnyside Post

A four-alarm fire tore through several businesses in Sunnyside Thursday morning.

Flames broke out inside Taiyo Foods, a Japanese market located at 45-08 44th St., at around 7:20 a.m. The fire quickly spread to the four neighboring businesses housed within the same one-story building, FDNY officials said.

The fire engulfed the buildings and was upgraded to a four-alarm blaze within one hour, according to the FDNY. More than 200 firefighters and EMS personnel reported to the scene.

Firefighters were able to get the flames under control at around 9:15 a.m. Three firefighters suffered non-life-threatening injuries. There were no other injuries.

 

Sunnyside Post 

A man who was found dead by firefighters following an explosion inside his Woodside/Elmhurst apartment Tuesday likely killed himself prior to the massive blast, police said.

Anesti Bulgaretsi, 26, was discovered by firefighters inside a seventh-floor penthouse apartment, located at 73-01 41 Ave., after an explosion and subsequent fire ripped through the upper floors of the building. The damage was so severe that it blew the roof off the penthouse ceiling and part of the building collapsed.

Police say that Bulgaretsi, who lived in the penthouse near the Woodside/Elmhurst border, was found in a bathroom tub with self-inflicted stab wounds to his stomach and wrist. The apartment’s gas line had been “cut” and matches had been found near his body along with a knife, police said.

Bulgaretsi was suffering from depression, chronic head pain and had been out of work for two months, the New York Daily News reported. He had been telling people before his death he wanted to return to his native Greece.

 

 

Tragedy strikes NYPD twice in Fresh Meadows

 

 

Queens Chronicle 

A highway officer was responding to a fiery car crash in the early hours of April 27 when he was struck and killed by an allegedly drunk driver.

Anastasios Tsakos, a 14-year NYPD veteran and father of two young children, was investigating the scene of an earlier, fatal collision at the time of the 2 a.m. incident.

“The absolutely tragic events of this past evening highlight, again, the many, many dangers our brave officers face every day and night — in all aspects of their critical work,” Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said in a press conference Tuesday morning, adding that the incident “amounted to a completely avoidable chain of events.”

According to police, Tsakos was one of many officers responding to a vehicle collision on the Long Island Expressway at the Clearview Expressway just 30 minutes past midnight. One of the vehicles was in flames.

Tsakos was diverting traffic from the scene, when 32-year-old Jessica Beauvais — who had a suspended license — came speeding along, police said. She swerved to avoid other cars and collided with Tsakos, who was standing next to his marked vehicle.

District Attorney Melinda Katz said Beauvais fled from the crash and attempted to exit the Horace Harding Expressway, where her car jumped the curb and mounted the sidewalk. Police surrounded her and she tried to flee again by putting the car in reverse but rammed into the police vehicle behind her twice before coming to a final stop and being apprehended.

Shea reported that Tsakos, who had been struck head on, was knocked onto a nearby grassy area. He was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Queens in critical condition, but was later pronounced deceased.

Beauvais, of Hempstead, LI, is being held pending arraignment in Queens Criminal Court on a 13-count complaint. The charges include two counts of vehicular manslaughter, drunk driving, colliding with an emergency vehicle and leaving the scene of a fatal accident.

Two hours after the crash, it was discovered that Beauvais’ blood alcohol content was 1.5 percent, the D.A.’s office said.

NY Post

If there was a silver lining to the tragic death of Denis Mullaney, the commanding officer of the 107th precinct in Queens who killed himself this week, it was the call to action made by the priest who officiated his funeral — where he implored the NYPD to do more to “break the silence” around suicides within their ranks.

Father Joseph Fonti, 54, told the mourners at the packed St. Mel’s Catholic Church in Flushing Friday that he was all too familiar with suicide, both within his own family and among his friends, some of whom are cops.

“People are fragile, they break,” Fonti told the crowd of roughly 250, including row after row of somber police officers. “If you suffer from cancer people run to you and they do anything for you. If you tell them you suffer from mental illness or anxiety they try but they get scared or they get uncomfortable.”

“We need to address it in our own families and in the church and in the Police Department. The police in particular have been so tight-lipped about this issue,” he urged. 

 Mullaney, 44, a 20-year police veteran, shot himself in his parked squad car Monday on Underhill Avenue near the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway. He was the NYPD’s first suicide of 2021.

Typically four to five NYPD officers commit suicide every year. But when 10 officers killed themselves in 2019, the department under then-Commissioner James O’Neill instituted changes, such as allowing officers in crisis to keep their badges even while handing in their firearms to de-stigmatize asking for help. There were four NYPD suicides in 2020.

“The time for silence is over,” Fonti said.

Mullaney, who was made commander of the 107th precinct in Queens last fall, called one of his superiors as well as family members to warn them he was feeling suicidal and reportedly apologized in advance, police sources have told The Post.

‘”He knew he could call in a 10-13 – the code for an officer needing help,” his uncle Eddie Mullaney, 80, a retired NYPD policeman, said at the funeral. His fellow officers as well as members of the large Mullaney family, which includes several generations of police officers, would “have come running.”

“We would have called in our own 10-13,” the elder Mullaney said. “We had Denis’ back. He knew that.”

Instead Mullaney, who was going through a divorce from his wife, Amanda, a fellow police officer, and who had recently moved back into his childhood home with his widowed mother, “made a different choice,” his uncle told the congregation.

The normally upbeat Mullaney, who leaves behind a young son, Denis Patrick III, had reduced crime during his seven months at the precinct, but had been “hurting” for the past five or six weeks — and his despondency seemed to come on “quick,” his uncle said.

Queens sees a rise in suicides stemming from the pandemic

NY Daily News

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz was shocked one recent Monday by a pair of borough suicides: A 49-year-old man found hanging in a parking garage. And a 29-year-old woman who jumped from her bedroom window.

The two deaths are among the 16 suicides in Queens since March 15, when New York schools were closed as the pandemic began to wrap the city in its lethal grip. The dead had nothing in common except “they were sheltered and not sure where to turn,” Katz told the Daily News on Wednesday.

For comparison’s sake, there were 17 total suicides in Queens from Jan. 1 through April 29, 2019, just one more than reported in the past six weeks. While there are no citywide suicide stats available at this point in the COVID-19 crisis, anecdotal evidence points toward a bump in New Yorkers taking their own lives.

“I started noticing the numbers coming in over the last month and a half, and I felt obligated to send a message that we need to be checking in on our colleagues, our loved ones, our friends," said Katz.

Queens was particularly hard hit by the pandemic, with 48,382 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 3,581 deaths as of Tuesday night — the most fatalities of any county from coast to coast, according to a data map by Johns Hopkins University.

Flushing middle school children are contemplating thoughts of suicide

NY Post

Kids aren’t talking about soccer or English class in the halls of JHS 189 in Flushing.

They’re talking about killing themselves.

Sixty students have expressed suicidal thoughts in the past year, Principal Magdalen Radovich told a recent gathering of nearly two dozen elected officials and community leaders. The Department of Education claimed Radovich “misquoted” the figure but refused to give The Post any data.
None of the children made good on their threats, and parents were called in each case. But shocked local lawmakers are calling it a crisis.

“If 60 kids on the Upper East Side talked about suicide, Mayor de Blasio would be there interjecting himself,” Assemblyman Ron Kim fumed of Hizzoner, whose wife, Chirlane McCray, has made mental health her signature cause.

“Sixty … is a staggering number, but even one is too many,” said City Councilman Peter Koo, who attended the Feb. 7 legislative breakfast at the school along with Kim and Flushing Chamber of Commerce’s John Choe.

Just the mention of the 60 cases — about 8% of Daniel Carter Beard School’s roughly 740 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders — sucked the oxygen out of the room, the men said.

The movers and shakers had even been scheduled to tour the school but ran out of time because they peppered the principal with so many questions about the suicide talk.

 

“It is shocking to me that central DOE has not yet communicated this data with us,” Kim said. “How could DOE have dropped the ball in addressing these issues?”

Radovich brought up the figure after she asked for the group’s buy-in for a mental health and wellness center on campus.

“She was trying to make the point that she had never seen anything like this in her years of being an educator,” Kim said.

Kim also wants a deeper discussion of what is behind the scary talk. He and Choe, the Chamber’s executive director, contend the crisis doesn’t stem from peer pressure or group think, but from Flushing’s lack of affordable housing and skyrocketing commercial rents.

Cellar murder story’s twist

From NBC:

The father of two toddlers who were found seriously hurt in their Queens home last week — one of whom later died — jumped to his death from a Midtown hotel, police sources said.

Mohammad Reza Torabi, the father of the 1-year-old twins, was found dead Saturday after jumping from the Renaissance New York Hotel 57 on East 57th Street, according to police sources.

Police had been interested in questioning Torabi about the incident prior to his death, the sources said.

Lots of murder happening in Flushing lately

From the Times Ledger:

A 51-year-old man shot his girlfriend in downtown Flushing Monday afternoon before turning the gun on himself, police said.

Xie Bin, of Flushing, shot Ya Ling Meng, 46, in the head and then killed himself in front of a Chinese restaurant on 41st Avenue, near bustling Main Street in broad daylight, according to the NYPD.

Responding authorities arrived at the scene just after 5:30 p.m. and found the two lying on the sidewalk, police said.

From the Times Ledger:

The burned bodies of three unidentified people were found with their throats slashed after a fire at a Flushing apartment building early Tuesday morning, police said.

Authorities responded to a fire in the Roosevelt Avenue building at around 4:50 a.m. and found the three bodies with severe burns in the living room of an apartment, according to the NYPD.

The house always wins

From the NY Post:

A gambler who spent his day playing the slot machines at the Resorts World Casino in Queens leaped head-first to his death from a balcony inside the Aqueduct casino Friday, cops and police sources said.

“He was not in the hole,” a police source said, adding that the man had actually made money at the slots. “Actually, he was up.”

The source said the man, identified only as a 38-year-old Asian, jumped at about 5:50 p.m. from the second-floor balcony, approximately 30 feet above the lobby floor.

Oliver Pan conveniently lost his mind

From the NY Post:

The former fund-raiser charged with scheming to funnel illegal campaign contributions to embattled city Comptroller John Liu has been sent to the nuthouse, further delaying his trial.

Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan is “involuntarily committed in connection with a mental-health condition” and undergoing treatment, Manhattan federal Judge Richard Sullivan said in court today.

Sullivan put off Pan’s trial, which was supposed to be under way already, until April 15 — unless Pan is fit before then.

Sources have told The Post that Pan was locked up Friday over fears he was suicidal.

Defense lawyer Irwin Rochman said he would be ready for trial within a few day of Pan’s release.

MTA considering doors on platforms

From the Daily News:

The MTA will reconsider installing sliding doors on some subway platforms to prevent riders from getting killed or injured by trains, a top official told the Daily News.

Fifty-four people this year have met their bloody ends on the tracks — a five-year high at more than one per week — according to preliminary figures released by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. There were 139 incidents in which people got hit by trains — often either because they fell or attempted suicide — compared with 146 in 2011.

“We have to revisit it,” interim MTA Executive Director Thomas Prendergast said Friday of a pilot project to install sliding doors on the tracks.

His remarks came one day after a crazed woman killed a 46-year-old immigrant by shoving him into an oncoming train in Queens. Earlier this month, horrified straphangers witnessed a homeless drifter hurl a man onto a Times Square subway track, where he was fatally crushed by a train.

The MTA has had on-and-off discussions about placing protective barriers along at least some platform edges, as other cities like London and Paris have done.

It would cost an estimated $1.5 million to install sliding doors along two platform edges in a new station, and more to retrofit an existing station. The MTA has 468 station, although many are too narrow for doors.

It would be nice if the mayor put the DOH's anti-soda and anti-salt money toward something like this which would actually protect the public.

Strange rise and fall of Cecilia Chang

From the NY Times:

She was petite. Elegant. Forceful.

“She could walk into a room and dominate a conversation,” said Jonathan Derek, a former assistant of Dr. Chang’s who attended dinners where Dr. Chang entertained potential donors. “Just by being there, she was the center of attention.”

She made her home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, in a $1.7 million Tudor-style house with seven bedrooms, maid quarters, stone fireplaces and soaring ceilings with skylights.

Yet in many ways, Dr. Chang was a woman out of place.

As her legal troubles mounted in recent years, she found friendship among bartenders and casino bus drivers. She would curry favor by lending money to people from Chinese communities in Flushing and to fellow gamblers at the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut, where she was spending more and more time.

And to her embarrassment, she never learned to speak English fluently, writing that she felt isolated from her colleagues, like a “money tree” that was shaken but never nurtured.

Dr. Chang was hired at St. John’s not long after graduating from its master’s program. Three years later, she was named a dean. A big part of her job was to keep the Taiwanese money flowing.

Closer to home, she helped arrange trips to Taiwan for political delegations from Queens that included Donald Manes, the Queens borough president who committed suicide after his role in a far-reaching bribery scandal became public in 1986.

Sid Davidoff, a lawyer, lobbyist and longtime friend of Mr. Manes’s, recalled that Dr. Chang served as the borough president’s political liaison to the Asian community in Queens. Dr. Chang was so close to Mr. Manes that when she renovated her Queens mansion, she asked him to manage the project, according to a former university colleague of hers who was not willing to be named. There was speculation that some of Dr. Chang’s business relationships extended into her personal life.

She followed in Donald's footsteps

Wondering what the tie was between all the tweeders and the recently deceased Cecilia Chang, who was on trial for embezzling at St. John's University?

This Queens Tribune article from 2003 is a great reminder:

I write this on Saturday, and three non-related events of the past two days brought into focus the part of Mike [Nussbaum]’s life that is somewhat separate from our business and his family. Although Mike integrates all that he does – his family members have become my friends and mine his – and his outside ventures often become my causes, there is another Mike.

Event 1, Thursday night: Lil and I attended the Queens Jewish Community Council’s 35th Anniversary Terrace-on-the Park Gala in honor of Claire Shulman and Mike Nussbaum.

Event 2, Friday afternoon: We cleared our Tribune office floors to make room for new carpet and in looking into Mike’s office, I noticed various mementos of a peace trip to North and South Korea that Mike had arranged when Congressman Gary Ackerman became the first person since Douglas McArthur to cross the 39th parallel which divides the two nations.

Event 3, Saturday morning: Mike took Senator Chuck Shumer to welcome Taiwan President Chen Shui-Bian to New York and announce Shumer was joining the newly formed Senate Taiwan Caucus to further ties between our two nations.

Yes, Mike brings us Asian clients and friends — but that’s the smallest part. His network includes the very top government officials and business giants in the Far East as well as their counterparts here in our country.

At the Thursday night affair, I met Mike’s old friend Dr. Cecelia Chang, vice president of St. John’s and Dean of the Asian Studies program. In 1980, as president of his own company, Mike helped Cecelia put together the first government and business delegation to visit Taiwan. Queens Chamber Prez, Citibank’s Peg Sweezy, Queens Beep Donald Manes, Congressman Jim Scheuer, Councilmembers Archie Spigner and Ed Sadowsky were a few who went with them. It was that trip which established Queens County and Taipai, the capital of Taiwan, as sister cities.

It also established Mike as a player in the Far East.

From the Daily Mail:

The New York Daily News also reports that detectives investigated Ms Chang in the murder of her husband. From his death bed, Mr Tsai reportedly wrote 'My wife did this!' when questioned by detectives.

He was shot four times in the back while leaving his business in Brooklyn, New York, in 1990. He died later and no one has every been charged in his death.

Tsai's note also suggested that Dr Chang had an affair with Queens Borough President Donald Manes, a neighbor who killed himself in 1986 after being caught in a scandal.

Murder-suicide-fire in illegal Bayside apartment

From DNA Info:

A fire that broke out in the basement apartment of a Queens home led investigators to a possible crime scene.

A woman, 33, whose body was covered in marks, was transported to Flushing Hospital according to the FDNY. Initially, she was recovered from a traumatic arrest by rescuers, but was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital, fire officials said.

Rescuers also discovered a man, 50, in the process of attempting to hang himself in a closet, said Brown. The fire turned out to be a small one, the FDNY said.

The man was in transported to New York Hospital Queens in cardiac arrest Wednesday night, and was last listed in serious condition, fire officials said.

Rescuers recieved a call at 7:24 p.m. to the two-story home on 214th Place near 40th Avenue for a fire that started in the basement of the home, the FDNY said.

The woman had been found inside the basement unit on a bed, Brown said.

Investigators believed that gas in the kitchen of the basement apartment may have set off the fire, which prompted a neighbor to call 911, Brown said.

Terrorism vs. suicide vs. insanity in Ozone Park explosion

From DNA Info:

A man apparently making low-grade pipe bombs with powder from fireworks blew himself up inside his Queens home Monday morning, sources said.

Theodore Ellinghaus, 50, ignited the blast on 111th Avenue in Ozone Park just before 9:30 a.m. and the explosion blew him apart, a source said. He was dead by the time paramedics arrived.

Investigators are looking into whether he was building bombs as part of a dispute with a former employer, a construction company. A police source described Ellinghaus as an "emotionally disturbed person."

From the NY Post:

A Queens man was killed after a powerful firecracker exploded in his home this morning, and law-enforcement sources said cops are looking into whether he may have committed suicide with it.

The 50-year-old man was clutching the M80 near his waist in the hallway of his Ozone Park home when it went off at 9:28 a.m., police said.

The explosion ripped off two fingers from his hand and tore a hole through his stomach, leaving his organs exposed, sources said.

Horrified relatives, who were at the 111th Avenue house at the time of the incident, made the grisly discovery.

Police are investigating whether the victim, who recently told neighbors he was suffering from depression, had decided to kill himself with the firecracker.

Dispute over illegal apartment rent turns deadly

From the Daily News:

A dispute over unpaid rent ended in horror Tuesday when a Queens landlord hacked his female tenant to death with a machete and then used the blade to end his life, police said.

Hettie Patterson’s screams drew the attention of neighbors as her landlord, Eulith Reid, attacked her with the machete in the backyard of his subdivided home on 143rd St. in Jamaica.

He struck at her head with deadly force.

A teenage boy who lives in a second-floor apartment in the home heard her cries, and ran outside to help, wearing only boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

But Reid, bloody blade in hand, rushed at the teen, and the boy quickly hopped a fence and called 911 from a neighbor’s home, his mother said, refusing to give her name.

Police showed up to the home about 11:30 a.m. They found a gruesome scene: Patterson, 48, a mother of four grown children who lived in a basement apartment, was sprawled out in the backyard, near death. Reid, 61, was found in his first-floor apartment. He had slit his throat and his wrists, police said. The machete was found near his body.

Both died at Jamaica Hospital, police said.

Snow-covered car hid suicide

From the Daily News:

A man who apparently shot himself dead in Queens last week was found early Tuesday in a car buried under several feet of snow, police and fire officials said.

The victim, believed to be in his 20s, was discovered about 12:30 a.m., slumped over in the driver's seat of a car near 162nd St. and Laburnum Ave. in Flushing.

Police believe he killed himself in the vehicle with a shotgun, which was recovered. He may have been dead since last Wednesday, police sources said.

Woman found hanged at 71st-Continental station

From Forest Hills Patch:

A 20-year-old woman was found dead in the women’s restroom at the 71st-Continental Ave. Subway station on Monday afternoon, according to police.

The woman, who has yet to be identified, was found by a commuter who went into the women’s restroom on the plaza level of the station at around 2:45 p.m. Monday afternoon.

Emergency Medical personnel arrived shortly after and pronounced the young woman dead at the scene.

Police said they have not been able to identify the victim, who was hanging from a water pipe in the bathroom by a rope.

Double killer turns gun on himself

From the NY Post:

The Brooklyn ex-con who killed himself to avoid arrest for a grisly double murder near a Queens cemetery executed his stickup partner because he was angry at not getting his share of the $20,000 they stole from drug dealers, The Post has learned.

Larry Spiecker, 42, fatally shot Lenny Archipolo, 47, in a car parked next to Linden Hill Cemetery in Ridgewood on Oct. 28 over a beef about divvying up the proceeds from a robbery the duo committed two weeks ago, said a longtime friend of the two men who declined to be identified by name.

Spiecker also killed Archipolo's girlfriend, Yomarya Santiago, 23, a former hooker who sometimes helped the men target johns, the friend added.

"She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," said the friend.

Spiecker, who did five stints in state prison, killed himself Wednesday night in his Bushwick home when cops arrived.

"Someone had overheard Larry say that if cops come he's gonna go all out and shoot at the cops and kill himself," the friend said.

Spiecker and Archipolo, who had a long rap sheet for narcotics busts, grew up together in Ridgewood and had spent the past decade brazenly robbing drug dealers and their stash houses, the friend said.

Like 2009, he went out with a "bang"

From the Daily News:

An elderly man died Thursday after he jumped off a Queens snow bank and stood in front of an oncoming Long Island Rail Road train, investigators and witnesses said.

The victim was struck at 11:20 a.m. by a Penn Station-bound train on a desolate stretch of track running through Elmhurst, investigators said.

"I saw somebody leap," says Michael Mertyris, 42, a snow shoveller from Maspeth.

"I heard the train coming down the tracks, and then all I heard was 'Ahhh!' and then I heard 'Bang!'"

The victim, whose identity was not immediately known, died instantly. He was wearing a heavy winter jacket but did not have any pants on, witnesses said.