A Brooklyn teacher inappropriately had two of her young students kiss in class - fostering a relationship that unwittingly helped solve a shooting and likely will cost the instructor her job, authorities said yesterday.

Turns out that the girl and the boy started a relationship of sorts, and the boy later bragged to her about a shooting he committed two years earlier when he was just 12 years old. The girl suspected the victim was her own brother. All good results, but the teacher, understandably, is in trouble for encouraging the kissing incident that led to all of this.

Source: NYDN, NY Post

Thanks, Emily.

Probationary firefighter Michael C. Reilly was killed today when the floor of a burning collapsed while he was inside looking for survivors. Four veteran firemen were also injured in the collapse, one very critically. Reilly was one of 138 firefighters who had responded to the the fire at a 99-cent store in the Bronx.

Reilly had just graduated from the academy in early July, realizing a life-long dream. Prior to joining the fire department, he had served with the Marines in Iraq.

Sources: NYT, AP, WABC

Photo: NYT

If you've lived in New York for a while and take the subway to work every day, chances are you've run into the guy who rants about Joel Steinberg and the Daily News. (Steinberg is a former criminal defense attorney convicted in 1987 of killing his young adopted daughter.)

One man has made it his mission to let subway riders know about the perceived connection between Steinberg and the Daily News. His name is Kirk Wilcox. I've heard his speech about five times in the last four years. He's always recognizable from his distinctive cadence and tendency to end every sentence with the direct address "people." As in, "You have to stop buying the Daily News, people. You're helping a child killer, people." Although he tends not to mention specifics, it seems he is upset with NYDN columnist Michael Daly, who one wrote a column asking people to send cigarettes to Joel Steinberg, apparently to get him sick.

The other morning, he entered my car and began his rant. I shot this video of him with my cellphone. (Quicktime will play the video.)

Here is a transcript:

You buy the Daily News you donate money to Joel Steinberg, people. He killed a helpless 6-year-old girl, people. Beat the little girl every day til she died. And you help [feed?/free?] the killer when you buy the Daily News. They don't want to talk about how much [garbled] the child killer, people, remember that. They have no [garbled] don't buy [...garbled...] child killer gets your money, people, that's all [garbled]

Look at the deadly ceiling. look up, people, at all the stuff going down, remember the woman that died, was killed in Boston a couple weeks ago when something fell down the tunnel and killed her? Well, it's gonna[?] happen to you, people, if you don't stop buying the Daily News.

In another part of his rant, he said that the Daily News does not allow its employees to wear identifying material while on the subway, because they know he will "humiliate" them.

Steinberg, by the way, was released from prison two years ago and reportedly lives in Harlem.

Update (9/20/2006): I saw him again the other day. This time he was ranting about the free Metro paper and its reporter Joshua Rhett Miller, apparently because of a story they ran about the DJ at Hot 97 who was saying crass/violent things about a rival DJ's little girl. Here's the new video: Subway Ranter Rants About Metro Paper, Pedophiles

• Before
• After
• A9 link to photos of that block
• More news on the collapse

At 3:30 am the other night, an ex-con grabbed two cordless power saws that had been left behind by workers at the 110th Street station on the 1 train, and began menacing passengers and MTA workers on the platform. Then, he attacked one person in particular, a 63-year-old postal worker. The victim had this to say to the NY Post from his hospital bed:

I screamed for help, 'Please help, please help me,' " Steinberg said. "The Transit Authority people heard me - they just looked. They never stopped to help me, and that disturbs me more than anything else. I begged for someone to call an ambulance and get this guy off me.

"He just kept on stabbing me, and stabbing me and stabbing me, and the transit employees kept on working and working and working."

Eventually, the attacker let up and demanded his victim's money. He then fled the station, dumping the tools in the garbage. He assaulted someone else shortly thereafter, and was eventually caught by police on West 93rd and Broadway.

The Post is right to point out this incident is reminsicent of the Kitty Genovese story. It is shocking and disgusting to me that people would just stand there and let this guy get attacked. When stuff like this happens, people need to get involved, as a group, and stop pretending that it doesn't affect them or it's not their problem. When a helpless person is attacked like this, it is a problem for all of us.

[source]

It's a shame this is how things played out. From the Times: "Residents said that they saw Ms. Lindboe walking barefoot in the snow, or heard her doing her laundry at 5 a.m. She was known to walk naked in front of her windows, and was rarely seen wearing anything other than a nightgown. Music from the 1930's would blare from her apartment at odd hours."

One retired officer makes a good point about public perception of these indicdents: Philip J. Messina, a retired New York Police Department sergeant, said that a problem in explaining such occurrences afterward is, "the public's misconception about distances, how long it takes a person to cover distances, and just how deadly a knife can be." At close range, a knife is superior to a gun, Mr. Messina said. "The person with the knife is in an offensive mindset and fighting to win," he said, "and the cop with the gun is fighting just not to lose."

[Source]

Several other well-known hip-hop figures were on the scene, including Missy Elliot, Lloyd Banks (of G-Unit) and Swizz Beatz. 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige were expected at the shoot, but there are conflicting reports as to whether they were present at the time.

Sources:
NYT (best coverage)
Newsday
Billboard
CBS

It's interesting that the cops at first tranquilized, rather than shot, the dog, which seemed to present a threat to them, and was hindering their efforts to reach a suspected killer. It shows that even the ESU unit has a protocol to follow and does not want to cause loss of life, even when that life is an animal's. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that it's an interesting element of a tragic story.

[source]

A fire broke out this afternoon on Sixth Ave and King Street. Smoke covered the area. I work down there and took the photo above. See the comments on this photo for some others, and Gothamist's coverage.

I just had the wildest NYC Christmas moment - was standing outside Port Authority trying to get a cab, and the PA sound system is blaring out "Have yourself a merry little Christmas", and then all of a sudden some guy books by me with a purse. Merry christmas, New York style.

She adds:

Wish I'd had presence of mind to whip out the cameraphone. Or, i guess, try to stop him. It happened too fast for me to react, but there was another guy chasing him.

Here's a bunch of pics of the aftermath. Thanks to manyhighways.com for taking all the pics prefixed "dscf."

An hour later, another explosion occurred. Apparently, today was a bad day for these kinds of incidents. In Brooklyn, a large explosion destroyed a car, split a manhole cover in two, and knocked residents off their feet.

Yesterday between 5-6pm. A man reportedly jumped on the subway tracks approaching the 170 street subway station on the number 4 line in the Bronx. I was a passenger on the train when I heard a thump.The train came to a halt and a visibly panicked driver ordered everyone off the train. Within minutes the station was swarmed with EMT, FDNY and NYPD. Below the tracks I saw the body parts of the victim falling into the cherry picker of a fire engine. There were no news vans, no reports later that evening. I called the Daily News this morning and no one had heard about it. Channel 12 (Bronx) news also said they knew nothing about it and that they do not report suicides.

Apparently, the pressure or humiliation from his arrest was too much for him to handle: he committed suicide today, shooting himself in the head near his home.

The NY Post reported that Major was featured in a documentary film about mentors, and his students seem to have liked him: "The way he teaches you, you are able to talk about your problems," said one studen. "He was very understanding." Another added, "He was our friend. He treated us like we were his kids. He inspired us. He was very truthful and he kept it real."

Well, maybe the problem is, he didn't keep it real enough. We get the impression from reading these kinds of stories that the adult figures involved get completely in a fantasy life where it's okay to have sex with 13-year-olds because you understand them and they understand you. Your sex drive, or your neediness, or your despair tricks you into ditching painful or inconvenient reality in favor of an unreality where everything is ok and you make the rules.

But, sooner or later, reality is going to catch up with you, usually in the form of a police investigation. Major might have been okay after the criminal justice system was done with him, but it seems that what he couldn't handle was the reality in which it's not okay to sleep with your students and there are consequences for your actions.

[Cross-posted on Bad Love]

Cops don't know whether the heroin is adulterated or just too pure, but either way, it's deadly.

In somewhat related news, cops busted a large heroin operation in the Bronx yesterday, netting $6 million worth of heroin, and a few members of the ring, one of whom tried to hide in a laundry dryer. According to Metro, the "brand names" of the heroin seized included Black Flag, Fully Loaded, Apple Martini, Cancer, Heart Attack, and HIV.

Sources: NYDN, NYP