Queens is burning again: Makeshift boarding house goes up in flames and kills 3 people in Jamaica Estates

Update. 17 people were living in this house. Queens Borough Redundancy/President Donnie Richards called the fire "preventable", which is pretty far-fetched considering these boarders could only afford to live virtually on top of each other because the city built a bunch of towers in the city's housing connect system that were 80% market rate. The landlord decided to put the fire out himself and waited to call 911. The City Of Yes will fix this.

 Firehouse

Three men died in a Queens fire early Sunday that tore through a house full of illegally converted apartments — with panicked survivors leaping out of windows to escape the flames, FDNY officials said.

The two-alarm blaze broke out on Chevy Chase St. near Henley Road in Jamaica Estates about 1:30 a.m., officials said, with the inferno soon bursting through the windows and roof.

FDNY officials described the house as a firetrap, with no apparent smoke detectors, makeshift walls and occupants packed into apartments on the first and second floor as well as the cellar and attic.

One of the survivors described making a desperate escape as his father died leaping out of a second-story window.

“There was a lot of smoke inside. We cannot get out. I broke the window so we can just get out of the window. This is the only way,” said Abdullah Zaher, 25. “There was no flames upstairs. Smoke! My father jumped, my brother jumped, and I jumped in the end.”

Zaher’s hand bled heavily from breaking the window as he spoke to the Daily News hours later. His father didn’t survive.

“He was everything to me, literally everything to me. He was a friend, he was a father, he was a giver. Literally everything. There was food, he would give me the food,” Zaher said. “He’s still working, trying to survive. He was a chauffeur.. Uber driver.”

Firefighters found three men dead at the scene, ages 45, 52 and 67, according to police.

“There’s no evidence to us at this time that there’s a working smoke detector in this house,” FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker told reporters at the scene. “And there’s a lot of evidence of extension cords and other carelessness.”

At least eight residents were hurt but survived, including three injured jumping out of second-floor and attic windows, according to police sources. One of the survivors is in critical condition, according to FDNY officials.

FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito described the scene in the house.

“When our units arrived, they had fire out the windows of the first floor. The fire had extended to the second floor and attic and these were all living spaces,” he said. “There were makeshift walls. The means of egress were substandard, exits blocked, stairways blocked.”

“There was a wall through the middle of the kitchen, which was very abnormal,” he added. “There’s makeshift access to the second floor, which allows the fire to spread much quicker upstairs.”

Four firefighters suffered minor injuries in the blaze, which the FDNY brought under control by about 3 a.m.

The house is listed in city records as a single-family home, but dozens of Buildings Department complaints dating as far back as 2008 show neighbors and residents complaining that it was illegally converted into a roominghouse.

The most recent complaint, from February 2023, reads, “The home owner [has] a mental disabled individual living in the basement. The homeowner built a half wall in the kitchen so someone can live there … there is approximately 12 to 14 people in the house.”

“It’s so frustrating because we’ve been watching this unfold for years. I called 311. My husband called 311. Many of the neighbors called 311,” said Steve Fischer, 67, who lives across the street on the upper-class tree-lined block. “We knew based on what we saw that it was being used as an illegal roominghouse.”

“It wasn’t for lack of many people trying to alert the city that there was something illegal going on,” he added.

Buildings Department officials said the owners of the house were hit with a violation in 2010 for illegally converting the basement into an apartment and in 2016 for work without a permit when they constructed two wood-frame structures in the back and side yards.

Since then, the Buildings Department has received several 311 calls complaining about illegal conversion conditions — but inspectors were unable to get into the building for one visit in 2020 and three visits in 2023, agency officials said.

“Calls would prompt people from the city to show up. Supposedly they would knock. The guy was not an idiot. He wouldn’t answer the door,” Fischer said of the landlord. “It’s so frustrating because it was so avoidable. … I hope he is charged criminally.”

The cause of the blaze is under investigation.

Tony Rock, 40, who paid about $1,000 a month to live in a first-floor room, dived out of a window to escape the fire.

“I heard screaming, the guy upstairs above me … begging to get out of the room. He’s in there dying,” Rock said.  “I saw him jump out the window.”

Nearly 20 years of complaints on four pages on the NYC Buildings website

 

Graveyard Bay

 

 NY Post

Jamaica Bay is quietly earning a reputation as the Big Apple’s version of the Bermuda Triangle — with at least eight dead bodies discovered in and around the area over the past year, some under mysterious circumstances. 

Investigations into five of the eight “floaters” who washed ashore or turned up in either Jamaica Bay or the nearby Atlantic Ocean side of The Rockaways have been closed, authorities said.

However, many questions still remain.

The “manner of death” on four of the bodies was deemed “undetermined” by the city Medical Examiner’s office, including Emmy-award winning cinematographer and photographer Ross McDonnell, who authorities have said loved to “wild swim” in the ocean and other waterways.

The 44-year-old Irishman’s headless, armless torso washed up on a Breezy Point beach Nov. 17, two weeks after leaving his Brooklyn home. 

 Police initially said they believed McDonnell likely drowned taking a late-night dip, but the ME said it declared the cause of death “undetermined” based on the lack of evidence off the predominantly sparse skeletal remains found.

 Three other deaths remain under investigation by authorities, including Marco Ramirez, 48, of Brooklyn, who was found dead Oct. 15 along the Cross Bay Boulevard shoreline of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Broad Channel, and an unidentified female who washed ashore in Breezy Point on Oct. 5.

City coroners have so far only been able to determine both the cause and manner of death for one of the eight deceased — a headless man whose unidentified remains were found in April by a fisherman near 165th Avenue and Cross Bay Boulevard in Queens.

About a 1,000 feet away, authorities found a rope hanging from the Joseph P. Addabbo Memorial Bridge.

That case was declared a hanging suicide, according to the Medical Examiner’s office.

Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens), who represents much of The Rockaways, said she expressed concerns to authorities over the summer after the body count reached five — only to be told by law enforcement they didn’t believe the deaths were connected.

Overdosing Ridgewood

 

Queens Chronicle

Three men died of apparent drug overdoses Thursday morning in Ridgewood, police said.

The victims were discovered unconscious and unresponsive at about 6:50 a.m. inside an apartment building at or near the corner of Seneca and Putnam avenues, according to an email from Det. Michael Berish of Community Affairs in the 104th Precinct. 

Police had been called by the brother of one of the victims, who met the officers when they arrived, according to the email, which was sent to Jon Kablack, president of the 104th Precinct Community Council.

All three men were pronounced dead at the scene, the email said, adding that “this incident is under preliminary investigation and details are subject to change.”

The victims were not immediately identified.

In response to follow-up questions, the NYPD press office said one victim was 38, one was 39 and one was unidentified; their cause of death will be determined by the Medical Examiner's Office; and the location was the basement of 1724 Putnam Ave.

Berish could not immediately be reached for more information.

Drug overdose deaths remain on the rise in the city.

 

Noise annoys and kills

NY Daily News 

A string of deadly encounters that started with complaints over loud music or offensive noise highlights a growing problem across New York City: Complaints about noise have exploded since the pandemic.

Loud noise and music are common disturbances for New Yorkers — but the conflicts can turn deadly. At least four recent killings have been tied to disputes over noise, with the most recent episode involving a 27-year-old Bronx dad who was killed in a dispute over loud music with a neighbor last week.

The victim’s fiancée and mother of his two young children said they had made complaints to 311 and building management about the neighbor’s noise, but nothing changed. The couple had just put their 5-week-old infant to sleep when blasting loud music started to shake the walls of their apartment.

The victim got dressed, walked across the hall to confront the neighbor about the noise. As he walked away, the neighbor allegedly stabbed him in the back.

There have been nearly 40,000 noise complaints called in to 311 this month, and roughly the same in the past few months, according to NYC Open Data. Noise complaints have boomed since the pandemic, with this year’s winter months seeing a roughly 40% rise in 311 noise complaints compared with the same time frame in 2019.

Arline Bronzaft, an environmental psychologist, said a variety of reasons may be to blame, including more time spent at home, working from home, outdoor dining, loud cars and helicopter noise.

“Noise can really drive people to be aggressive — have there been arguments? Yes. Are people pounding the ceilings until the noise comes down? Absolutely,” Bronzaft said.

“People react psychologically to sound that’s intrusive,” she said. “They get angry about the sound, they get upset. And then when you start showing those kinds of reactions, your heart beats faster, your pulse rate increases, circulation is altered.

“Psychologically, you’re stressed.”

“In New York City, neighbor noise is a serious problem, because we do have apartment buildings and people do live close to each other ... and things changed during COVID, when people started to work from home,” Bronzaft said.

Rachel Miller-Bradshaw, a board member of the Fordham Hill Owners Corp. and resident of City Council District 14, which logs among the highest numbers of 311 noise complaints in the city, said that she’s noticed more noise since the peak of COVID-19.

“It’s a major issue,” she said. “Every New Yorker, regardless of socioeconomic status or neighborhood you reside in, has a right to a serene living environment, at least outside of normal business hours, and after the pandemic things definitely did get worse.”

“It’s really declining the quality of life here,” Miller-Bradshaw added, noting that she knows people who’ve moved from the city because of noise.

Queens is still burning: Explosion and fire destroys three houses in South Richmond Hill, kills family of three

 

Impunity City 

Nine families living in two family houses. A few of them living in the basements, which included the family that perished from the explosion and the inferno. While the block is a close knit community, these families could have lived in a safer home if the city didn’t have such an incremental “affordable housing” program for middle class and working poor families and built 75-80% of it for wealthier people. How many more citizens will have to risk their lives and livelihoods to find an affordable place to live? And how many homeowners can hang on to their properties with the massive taxes they pay compared to ones in wealthier enclaves that they have to rent out their basements to settle in their hometowns?

 

Two boys drowned in Jamaica Bay

 

 NY Daily News

Two Queens boys celebrating the start of summer died Friday after they fell into Jamaica Bay and never resurfaced, police said.

The two victims, who are both 13, were on an outcropping of rocks near Broad Channel at about 11:40 a.m. when they fell into the water.

Panicked onlookers called 911. NYPD divers recovered one of the two just before 1 p.m. and rushed him to Jamaica Hospital, where he died.

The second teen was found under the waves about 40 minutes later. He was rushed to Jamaica Hospital in extremely critical condition but he could not be saved, officials said.

Their names were not immediately released.

The two boys, accompanied by a group of friends, made their way to the bay in celebration of the first day of summer break, a shaken uncle of one of the teens said outside the hospital Friday evening.

“Yesterday was the last day of school and they were just trying to have a good time, messing around like kids do,” said Michael Rachel. “They were out on the rocks but when the tide comes in you couldn’t see them. They’re gone.”

Governor Kathy bails out Mario's son's machinators on the two year anniversary of the edict for nursing homes to treat COVID-19 patients

 

NY Post

Gov. Kathy Hochul is seeking to spend up to $5 million in taxpayer money to pay the legal bills of dozens of current and former state employees who got caught up in the sexual harassment scandal that forced ex-Gov Andrew Cuomo from office, The Post has learned.

The move could benefit Cuomo cronies who stayed loyal to the disgraced ex-governor to the very end of his scandal-scarred tenure — including former aide Melissa DeRosa.

But DeRosa, when reached by phone Wednesday night, said, “I am not seeking reimbursement for either the nursing-homes investigation or the attorney general’s sexual-harassment investigation.”

But, she added, it was “appropriate” for the other public employees to get reimbursement for outside counsel at the advice of the state.

Hochul has been discussing the matter with Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Attorney General Letitia James, sources familiar with the matter said.

Sources said Hochul has been working to determine what, if any, legal avenues exist that would allow the state to cover the bills.

 The governor’s office expects law firms representing about 30 current and former chamber employees to apply for any such reimbursement estimated to be up to $5 million, a source said.

NY Post 

Lawmakers and advocates commemorated the more than 15,000 nursing home deaths in New York amid the COVID-19 pandemic on Wednesday, as they pitched a measure to get to the bottom of the missteps made under disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo that caused the fatalities in elder-care facilities.

During a press conference in Albany, an ideologically diverse coalition rallied behind a bill to designate March 25 as “We Care Remembrance Day,” and another to create a body tasked with studying the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic response on deaths in nursing homes.

Friday marks exactly two years since the state Department of Health under then-commissioner Howard Zucker implemented a directive that required nursing homes to readmit residents who tested positive for the coronavirus. 

“It wasn’t just an executive order — it was a declaration of eldercide in the state of New York,” charged Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), a fierce Cuomo critic whose uncle died in April 2020 of COVID-19 in a Flushing nursing home. 

“This executive order was one of the biggest mistakes in the history of the state of New York,” Kim said.

The infamous state Department of Health order, rescinded under public pressure on May 10, 2020, forced sickened seniors into facilities housing those most vulnerable to COVID-19 and increased the death toll among residents of them, according to a New York State Bar Association report.

Bill de Blasio diverted FDNY building inspectors to montior vaccine mandate enforcement at restaurants with deadly results

 

NY Daily News

 A Bronx building that became a towering inferno in January, leaving 17 dead, was scheduled to be examined by an FDNY fire inspector several months beforehand — but it didn’t happen because the inspector was reassigned to conduct COVID restaurant inspections.

 The troubling account came from Oren Barzilay, president of the union that represents paramedics and fire inspectors who testified Wednesday at a hearing held by the City Council’s Fire and Emergency Management Committee.

“That building was scheduled to be inspected, but because they were sent to a task force, that building was not inspected,” he testified.

“It’s terrible,” he told the Daily News after his testimony. “I’m not blaming Eric Adams. I’m blaming the previous administration for not thinking it through.”

The Jan. 9 blaze at Twin Parks North West in the Bronx killed 17 people and left dozens more injured. The fire was caused by a faulty space heater that burst into flames and made worse by malfunctioning doors that were designed to close on their own. Because the doors failed to shut, the toxic smoke spread quickly through the 19-story building.

The blaze was the deadliest in the city since the Happy Land night club fire killed 87 people in 1990.

Barzilay told the Daily News an inspector was assigned to Twin Parks about a year before the fire took place to examine the building’s stand pipe system, which would supply it with water in the event of a fire. Barzilay noted that while inspectors wouldn’t have focused on inspecting doors, any problems they saw would have been flagged and addressed.

“If they had noticed anything else, they would have addressed the issue,” he said.

Barzilay also noted a Brooklyn building that was the site of an explosion recently was also slated to be inspected before the incident, but was not because inspectors were diverted to enforce vaccine mandates at city restaurants. Mayor Adams rolled back those requirements, known as the Key2NYC, on Monday.

FDNY union leader believes forced vaccinations killed three firemen

 

NY Daily News 

An FDNY union leader wants the department to investigate whether three recent firefighter deaths resulted from city-mandated COVID-19 jabs.

The request from Uniformed Fire Officers Association President James McCarthy comes after the line-of-duty deaths of Lt. Joseph Maiello, 53, who was found dead in a Staten Island firehouse after a Christmas shift, and Firefighter Jesse Gerhard, 33, who died at his firehouse in Far Rockaway, Queens, after a medical episode Wednesday.

McCarthy wants the FDNY to include in its vaccine probe the death of Probationary Firefighter Vincent Malveaux, 31, who died Dec. 2 at the FDNY Training Academy on Randalls Island after suffering a medical episode believed to be a seizure.

“That’s a significant amount of people in a very short time,” said McCarthy. “The vaccine is a concern with our members because it is something new that is being put into our bodies. It could be a factor.”

McCarthy is asking the FDNY to provide the union with any information related to the fallen members’ COVID vaccine history, sources said.

Investor slumlord negligence turned Bronx Mitchell-Lama apartment building into a deathtrap

Reuters 

 

NY Post 

The Bronx building where at least 19 people died in a massive blaze Sunday was cited for more than two dozen violations and complaints — despite $25 million in state loans for repairs.

The citations, including for vermin infestation and faulty elevators, came after the 2013 infusion of state cash — and before the building was sold to an investment group two years ago, records reviewed by The Post show.

The 19-story, 120-unit building has been hit with complaints and violations since 2014.

Part of a complex initially known as Twin Parks, the building went up in 1972 as an urban renewal project constructed by the state UrbaDevelopment Corporation — the present-day Empire State Development Corporation.

The building was owned by Cammeby’s International Group, whose principal is real estate mogul Rubin Schron, until it was sold to a consortium of three investor groups in December 2019.

But not before Schron, a pal of onetime state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, got nearly $25 million in state loans to make repairs and upgrades at the building.

Since 2014, one year after Schron got the state loans, the building amassed more than two dozen complaints and violations, none related to fire hazards or potential lapses in safety standards, city records show.

A message left for Schron Sunday was not returned.

The 2019 sale of the building was part of a $166 million deal for eight rent-regulated buildings in the Bronx, according to Real Estate In-Depth.

Rick Gropper, the co-founder of one of the three firms, Camber Property Group, was a member of the housing committee for the mayoral transition team of Eric Adams, sources said. 

The other two investment firms with ownership of the building are LIHC Investment Group and Belveron Partners.

“We are devastated by the unimaginable loss of life caused by this profound tragedy,” the owners said in a statement.

“We are cooperating fully with the Fire Department and other city agencies as they investigate its cause, and we are doing all we can to assist our residents.”

Reuters

New York authorities said on Monday the city was investigating a possible "maintenance issue" with a door that failed to close when devastating fire erupted in a Bronx apartment building a day earlier, killing 17 people, including eight children.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, just over a week into the job, said at a briefing that the city's medical examiner determined the fire had claimed two fewer victims than the 19 announced on Sunday.

The blaze broke out on Sunday morning in the 19-floor Twin Parks North West building, which provided affordable housing units for low-income New Yorkers. Many of the residents were from the large Gambian community that lived in the neighborhood.

"This is a global tragedy as The Bronx and New York City is representative of the ethnicities and cultures across the globe," Adams said during a briefing in front of the building. "This is an evolving crisis. An unspeakable tragedy."

Adams said he spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden, who pledged that the White House will provide "whatever" New York City needs to address the aftermath of the fire.

The catastrophe was likely to stir questions on safety standards in low-income city housing. It was the second major fire in a residential complex in the United States this week after 12 people, including eight children, were killed early on Wednesday when flames swept through a public housing apartment building in Philadelphia.

Earlier in the day on "Good Morning America," Adams said smoke from the fire was able to spread due to a door being open. Doors in apartment houses are required to close automatically to prevent fires from spreading through the building.

"There may have been a maintenance issue with this door and that is going to be part of the ongoing investigation," Adams said. "This is all going to come out during the investigation."

Addressing the revised death toll, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said patients had been taken to seven different hospitals in the city, which led to “a bit of a double count,” adding that many remain in care still fighting for their lives.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that a door from 15th floor to stairway was not functioning as it should, Nigro said, adding that residents would have been safer if they stayed in their apartments rather than exiting down stairways.

Some 60 people were injured in the blaze and 32 people had been hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, officials said on Sunday.

Fire marshals determined through physical evidence and accounts from residents the fire started in a portable electric heater in the apartment's bedroom. The heat had been on in the apartment building and the portable heater had been supplementing that heating, they said.

Some 200 firefighters helped put out the blaze.

Rat salad

 

Gothamist

Neal Phillip was biking through Canarsie Park on Saturday when something stopped him in his tracks: nearly a dozen bloated rat corpses, lying belly-up on a stretch of sand overlooking Jamaica Bay.

“When I saw the first one, I thought it was strange. Then I started seeing them all over the place,” recalled Philip, a professor of environmental science at Bronx Community College. “Seeing them dead like that wasn’t very pleasant.”

In recent days, similar displays of mass rodent death have appeared elsewhere in the five boroughs, a grim outcome of the floods brought by Tropical Storm Ida. Experts believe that hundreds of thousands of rats may have perished in the deluge, amounting to one of the largest vermin depopulation events in decades.

“With this particular storm, any rats that were in the sewers were either crushed by the current or were swept out into the rivers,” said Bobby Corrigan, a longtime pest control expert and former ​​rodentologist for the NYC Department of Health. “I can’t imagine they would’ve survived.”

While there are no reliable counts of New York City’s rats, estimates typically start in the many millions. A significant portion live in the subways and sewers, both of which were swiftly inundated during last week’s historic rainfall.

Knock off e-batteries are leading to a rise in house fires

NY Daily News 

Off the street, e-bikes and electric scooters take a toll in injuries and lives.

Two Three New Yorkers died and 60 63 were injured — including 18 firefighters — in 55 56 blazes sparked by the lithium-ion batteries that power the zippy two-wheel rides used by delivery workers and other people.

In the previous year, the lithium-ion batteries caused fewer than half as many fires — 22 blazes that injured 13 people, including four firefighters.

 “Before we even knew, the fire was already out of control,” said Octavia Thomas, 26, who escaped the blaze from her first-floor apartment.

But the Fire Department already sees faulty after-market batteries as a problem, Flynn told the Daily News.

Replacements, and not the batteries that originally come with scooters, are usually the ones to catch fire, he explained. “The most important thing to do is to stick with the manufacturer’s recommended batteries,” Flynn said.

Another safety tip: “Never leave the battery charging unattended,” Flynn said. “A lot of people charge them overnight and go to sleep, but we recommend you don’t do that.”

Overcharging and charging batteries in confined spaces are also a bad idea.

“People also tend to charge the batteries in the doorway of their homes, and that causes a substantial safety hazard,” Flynn said. A fire in a doorway can block escape routes, he explained.

 

 

Cuomo continues to hide the bodies

 

NY Post

 New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has continued publicizing a much lower state COVID-19 death toll count than the numbers being presented to and displayed by the federal government, a new report revealed.

The state and federal coronavirus death toll differential has even widened this year to a current reported gap of 11,000 — despite numerous investigations into the Cuomo administration for lowballing the number of nursing home COVID-19 deaths, according to a review by the Associated Press.

News of New York’s undercount comes months after Florida Gov. Ron Desantis was erroneously accused of doing the same thing.

As of this week, New York publicized a COVID-19 death toll of roughly 43,000, compared to the Centers for Disease Control public tally of about 54,000.

The total, higher federal count, includes people who have died with coronavirus as a cause or contributing factor listed on their death certificate, the report said.

Cuomo has refused to include “probable” coronavirus fatalities in the state’s reporting, but New York City has done so since April 2020.

D.O.B. puts a stop to overdevelopment after three construction workers got killed last month

 

NY Daily News

More than 300 city construction sites have been shut down this month because building inspectors found glaring safety violations, the Daily News has learned.

The 322 sites, more than a third of which were in Brooklyn, were shuttered during a massive zero-tolerance safety sweep conducted by the Department of Buildings designed to tamp down on construction deaths in the city.

Seven hardhats have died in construction-related accidents so far this year, including three in May alone, Buildings officials said.

Those killed include 32-year-old Queens resident Diego Lliguicota, who was working on the sixth floor of a Long Island City building when he fell down an elevator shaft on May 22.

Just five days later, on May 27, a 49-year-old Brooklyn construction worker died after he fell four stories off the roof of a Flatbush bank he was helping demolish. He was not tethered to anything, he lost his balance and fell, authorities said.

“The recent spate of construction worker deaths in our city is tragic, senseless — and even worse, entirely avoidable,” DOB Commissioner Melanie La Rocca said.

The Elmhurst Horror

 

 Impunity City

It happened on a cold early morning just an hour before sunrise, 6 days before Christmas, a 5-alarm fire engulfed a three family house. The inferno spread so rapaciously that it instantly killed three men as they desperately tried to flee while trapped in their rooms, their only exit was sliding doors by the balcony on the second floor, which were locked. It also torched the three floor house attached to it, making both structures inhabitable.

Before the deadly blaze the house was proficiently and exceedingly habitable. Since the fire was extinguished, a lot of mystery still surrounds this tragedy. Not much is known about the tenants; especially their names which have not been identified, notably the three who perished in the inferno except for their ethnicity. The one tenant who survived the destruction and the deaths, also refused to be identified.

This house had an incredible lengthy record of housing violations going back 4 years with over $200,000 in fines. Mostly in the last two years, the former landlord had repurposed what was once a nice two family house and transformed it into a makeshift boarding house with single room occupations constructing seven rooms on each floor from the basement to the attic. Even the garage wasn’t spared as the original landlord , Mumarrawa Mahmood, managed to convert it into a rental where the superintendent of the house lived and added more dwellings to it even after repeated visits and fines by the Department Of Buildings.

 This house must have been a sanctuary for the victims of this city's perpetual housing crisis (especially in two terms under Mayor de Blasio), especially those working check to check and undocumented immigrants, essential workers mostly doing gig jobs delivering food or driving for apps and working construction building towers they will never afford to live in.

 

 

 

 

 

Similar COVID-19 patient mandate is still being implemented in homes for the disabled.

NY Post 

 It wasn’t just nursing homes.

The Cuomo administration has spent the last year quietly allowing COVID-19 patients to return to homes for the disabled — much like it did with nursing homes — and the policy remains in effect.

The state’s Office for People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD) issued a directive on April 10 barring the group homes from denying admission or re-admission to someone “based solely on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”

The order also prohibits the facilities from requiring that a hospitalized individual be tested for COVID-19 before being admitted or re-admitted.

At least 552 residents of such homes have died of the virus as of Wednesday. More than 6,900 out of the more than 34,552 who live in the facilities have been infected, the agency said.

The guidance is similar to the controversial state Health Department order issued in the early days of the pandemic that required nursing homes to accept recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals.

The Cuomo administration has faced mounting criticism that the later-rescinded March 25 policy directive fueled outbreaks in hard-hit nursing homes. The governor has claimed that the policy followed federal guidance.

Cuomo's health department prefabrication of nursing home death count confirmed

  NY Post

Top advisers to Gov. Andrew Cuomo successfully pushed state health officials to omit from a public report the number of nursing home residents who died in hospitals from COVID-19, it was revealed on Thursday night.

Instead, the July state Health Department report listed only the nursing home residents who died from the virus at their facilities, far undercounting the total death toll of the state’s most vulnerable population, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

The revelation further confirms the Cuomo administration possessed a more complete accounting of the COVID-nursing death count during the summer, but waited eight more months to cough up the true totals after repeatedly stonewalling lawmakers and the media, losing a lawsuit and being subjected to a damning state attorney general report.

Last month, The Post exclusively reported that one of Cuomo’s top aides, Melissa DeRosa, told Democratic leaders in a video conference call that “we froze” out of fear that the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors.

The July report, which largely defended a controversial and since-rescinded administration policy of requiring nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients discharged from the hospitals, had said 6,432 nursing-home residents died from the virus.

In truth, though, more than 15,000 nursing home residents are now reported to have died in the state from the illness, including in their facilities and hospitals.

Two homeless people murdered, two other people wounded from stabbings on the A train from Queens to Manhattan

 

QNS 

  Detectives are investigating two deadly stabbings on the opposite ends of the A line in Queens and Manhattan within a span of two hours between Friday night and Saturday morning.

Police sources said they are investigating a possible link between the two cases as well as a pair of additional stabbings that occurred on Feb. 12-13 at the 181st Street station on the A line in Washington Heights. The victims in those cases are expected to survive their injuries.

During a Saturday afternoon press conference at One Police Plaza, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea announced that the NYPD would add 500 officers throughout the subway system immediately to increase safety. Detectives, meanwhile, are working around the clock looking for possible suspects and are seeking tips from the public.

The first victim, an unidentified man, was found stabbed while seated on board A train at the Mott Avenue station in Far Rockaway, Queens at about 11:20 p.m. on Feb. 12.

Officers from the NYPD Transit District 23 and the 101st Precinct discovered the man on a bench inside one of the train cars with stab wounds to his torso and neck.

Responding EMS units pronounced the victim dead at the scene. Police have not yet disclosed his identity, pending family notification.

Two hours later, cops in Manhattan responded to the fatal stabbing of a woman on board an A train that stopped at the West 207th Street in Inwood — the line’s northern terminus — at about 1:21 a.m. on Feb. 13.

The discovery was made during the nightly overnight closure period of the entire subway system, when train cars are disinfected to guard against the spread of COVID-19.

Cops from NYPD Transit District 3 and the 34th Precinct, while responding to a 911 call, found the 44-year-old woman under the seats on board one of the train cars with several stab wounds to her body.

EMS units also pronounced her dead at the scene. The NYPD has withheld her identity, pending family notification.

NY Post 

The “A-train Ripper” is in custody, multiple law enforcement sources told The Post on Saturday night.

The knife-wielding madman was wanted in a gruesome subway spree that left two homeless people dead and two others slashed along the A train line, and was nabbed in Upper Manhattan, the sources said.

His shoes were still splattered with his victims’ blood when he was taken into custody — and he was still in possession of the bloody knife, one source added.

The yet-named suspect was in custody at the 34th Precinct in Washington Heights, the sources said.

The bloodshed sparked an outcry for safer subways, and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea responded, announcing a “surge” of 500 additional cops for the department’s Transit Bureau to be deployed across the city immediately.

The spree began Friday morning, not far from where the alleged stabber was caught, authorities said.

Governor Cuomo's moll, er aide blamed Trump for their repression of nursing home fatalities data

 

NY Post 

Governor Cuomo’s top aide privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers for withholding the state’s nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 — telling them “we froze” out of fear the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors, The Post has learned.

The stunning admission of a cover-up was made by Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa during a video conference call with state Democratic leaders in which she said the Cuomo administration had rebuffed a legislative request for the tally in August because “right around the same time, [then-President Donald Trump] turns this into a giant political football,” according to an audio recording of the two-hour-plus meeting.

“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” DeRosa said. “He starts going after [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer.”

In addition to attacking Cuomo’s fellow Democratic governors, DeRosa said, Trump “directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us.”

“And basically, we froze,” she told the lawmakers on the call.

“Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”

DeRosa added: “That played a very large role into this.”

After dropping the bombshell, DeRosa asked for “a little bit of appreciation of the context” and offered what appears to be the Cuomo administration’s first apology for its handling of nursing homes amid the pandemic.

But instead of a mea culpa to the grieving family members of more than 13,000 dead seniors or the critics who say the Health Department spread COVID-19 in the care facilities with a March 25 state Health Department directive that nursing homes admit infected patients, DeRosa tried to make amends with the fellow Democrats for the political inconvenience it caused them.

“So we do apologize,” she said. “I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair. It was not our intention to put you in that political position with the Republicans.”

St. Albans nursing home gave residents risky hydroxychloroquine cocktail treatment without notifying their relatives

 THE CITY

 Yvonne Parson wasn’t in the room when her father died. Like millions of people with relatives inside one of the country’s many nursing homes this past year, she couldn’t be.

James Hutcherson, a 93-year-old resident of New York State Veterans’ Home at St. Albans, had been living in the state-run Queens facility for four years, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Parson says she visited him twice a week, paid his medical bills and oversaw his care, communicating regularly with the nursing staff.

By March 2020, however, those communications became more difficult. Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all nursing facilities closed to visitors and, soon after, COVID-19 infiltrated St. Albans. On April 8, Parson got the call she never wanted: Her father had died, a doctor explained.

Weeks later, Parson received her father’s final medical bill in the mail. Scanning the list of prescriptions, she paused on two drugs she didn’t recognize: hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. She had known everything about his medical treatment. Why didn’t she know about this?

Hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug first approved in the United States in 1955, was used widely throughout the country last spring as an experimental treatment for COVID-19. The drug, often combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, had been touted for months by officials at every level of government — most prominently by then-President Donald Trump.

The state, which licenses and inspects all 613 nursing homes in New York, allowed the facilities to administer hydroxychloroquine to patients exposed to the virus, even after public health experts cautioned against its use in non-hospital settings or for elderly and vulnerable patients.

Both drugs carry potential side effects, including anemia, neuromuscular damage, vision impairment and, of greatest concern, fatal heart arrhythmia. While rare in healthy patients, the risks increase with age and comorbidities like kidney or cardiovascular disease, experts say.