🚨#WANTED🚨 Let's all be on the lookout for him! He's wanted for #ROBBERY! In the morning of 9/14/19 he assaulted and stole money from an 89 yo female victim. He's about 5'8", 160 lbs. If you recognize them or have any info, ☎️ our 🕵🏻♂️ at 212-477-7809 or DM @NYPDTips. pic.twitter.com/CrfaywHrJi
— NYPD 9th Precinct (@NYPD9Pct) September 19, 2019
Osorio says the man knew exactly what he was after: $5,000 she spent two years saving to buy a headstone for her late husband's grave. Police say the frightened woman told the thief the money was in her bedroom, in a drawer.
Osorio and her husband, Salvatore, were married for 50 years.
She says she had mentioned to people she was finally ready to buy the headstone and that may have been why the thief targeted her.
Police are now looking for this man who weighs about 160 pounds, 5'8" tall, with a full beard.
He was last seen wearing blue jeans, hoodie, t-shirt, white sneakers, and a Philadelphia Flyers baseball cap.
With the money gone, Osorio says she has no choice but to start saving all over again.
“We support a plan that will provide much-needed flood protection. At the same time it should expand the park and reduce greenhouse emissions in response to the climate crisis,” says Howard Brandstein, director of the Sixth Street Community Center and a rally organizer.
The flood plan will have devastating consequences for residents in NYCHA housing and other low-and-middle income apartments bordering the park.
“Dust and other pollution from construction will affect air quality. Neighborhood residents already have high levels of asthma and 9/11-related upper respiratory illnesses,” says Lower East Side resident Pat Arnow, who is an organizer of the protest. “NYCHA buildings are undergoing heavy resiliency construction now. Some of their areas look like a war zone.”
The closure of the park for at least three and a half years will rob residents of critical green space, ball fields for team sports, and areas for community gatherings.
“An earlier HUD-funded plan, designed with the community over four years, was summarily scrapped by the city last year,” says Brandstein. “This plan was far more comprehensive. It provided flood control and resiliency without destroying the park, which has long been an oasis for our diverse Lower East Side and East Village neighborhoods.”
"As I was approaching, we made eye contact, and I noticed he was staring pretty intensely at me," Chan said. Chan initially had been cycling in the bike lane, but says he swerved out into the car lane to avoid pedestrians standing in the bike lane. "I was going 20 MPH so it didn't make sense to be in the bike lane," he added. "I was comfortably keeping pace with traffic, and I had the green light."
As he passed the intersection at Fourth Street, Chan says the man stepped out from the crosswalk and kicked him off his bike. He swerved left into the orange barrier between the car and bike lanes, crashed, flipped over and landed in the bike lane on his head. As a result of the fall, he was bleeding from a gash on his forehead; he injured his elbow; and his bike was mangled, with the front wheel and handle bars twisted.
By this point, a crowd of bystanders had gathered, several of whom had witnessed what happened to Chan. When the man tried to leave, Chan says some onlookers tried to keep him there, and a fight broke out, with several punches thrown. At this point, it attracted the attention of some nearby NYPD officers from the 9th Precinct.
Chan says he told them what had happened, but was met with immediate skepticism and aggressive questioning. According to Chan, the officers accused him of changing his story because he wasn't sure if the man kicked his bike or put his foot in front of the bike.
"They immediately started gaslighting me," Chan said. "They had an idea already of what happened, and anything I said did not matter. They approached with a demeanor of deep suspicion and skepticism at everything I said, I felt like I was the one being interrogated rather than the person who kicked me off my bike."
"To me, the main point is just the utter and willful inadequacy of the police as a system for keeping the city safe for cyclists," he said. "We face terrifying threats every day just trying to get from point A to B and the city has repeatedly shown it does not give a fuck. The cops' attitude to me totally confirmed this — the fact that I was on a bike meant I had no rights. That if I got hurt, even if someone attacked me, it was my fault."
