New York

Man Is Charged With Murder in Random Scooter Shooting Spree

Published

2 years ago

July 10, 2023

Man Is Charged With Murder in Random Scooter Shooting Spree

A man who drove a scooter through Queens, firing randomly at people on the street, was charged on Sunday with the murder of an 86-year-old man during the half-hour shooting spree, the police said.

The man, Thomas Abreu, 25, of Brooklyn, was charged with killing Hamod Ali Saeidi, of Queens, according to the police.

Mr. Abreu has also been charged with attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon in two other incidents: the firing of shots at a group of people near 108 Street and Jamaica Avenue on Saturday and at a 40-year-old man about four miles away, the police said.

The motive for the attacks remained unclear on Sunday.

Video from a security camera of the fatal shooting on Jamaica Avenue near 109th Street shows an assailant, who is on a scooter, slowly drive up to the 86-year-old man. The video, obtained by The Daily News, then shows the assailant raise a gun, point it at the man’s back and fire.

The man turns around as if startled before bending over, his shirt stained with blood.

The police are still investigating three other shootings on Saturday where three people were wounded. They took place over six miles from Brooklyn to Queens, and in each case witnesses said a man on a scooter opened fire.

Police officials said at a news conference on Saturday that the incidents — including the fatal shooting of Mr. Saeidi — were connected, and that the assailant was riding a Fly E-Bike without a license plate.

As of Sunday afternoon, Mr. Abreu had not been charged in the shootings where three people were wounded.

Mr. Abreu is expected to be arraigned in Queens on Sunday evening, according to a spokeswoman for the Queens district attorney. Authorities have not released the names of the other victims.

Edward A. Caban, the acting police commissioner, said in the news conference on Saturday that the “violent sequence of events” required an urgent, expansive search to track down the shooter.

“We’re all so grateful that this person is not out on our streets,” Commissioner Caban said after the arrest.

Mr. Saeidi came to the United States from Sana’a, Yemen in 1962, searching for “a new life,” said his son, Ahmed Alsaedi, 65, in an interview on Sunday.

Credit…Ahmed Alsaedi

He lived first in California, where he worked on a farm, then moved to New York City and opened grocery stores, according to his family. He retired from his real estate business 10 years ago. He had dreamed of returning one day to the small mountain village where he grew up and was planning a trip back to Yemen on July 17.

On Saturday morning, he left his home in Richmond Hill, Queens, a three-story gabled house with an Eid Mubarak flag hanging above the porch, for his daily ritual: a three- to-four mile walk around nearby Forest Park, then prayers at his mosque.

Later that day, Mr. Alsaedi got a call from his stepmother saying that his father was late.

They tried his phone, but there was no answer. Then, they received a call from a hospital.

The family later learned Mr. Saeidi, the father of three sons and three daughters, had been shot in the back on his way to the mosque.

“My heart is broken, my family is devastated,” Mr. Alsaedi said. “We couldn’t believe what happened. I need justice.”

Random shootings in New York City are rare. In 2006, Matthew Colletta, a 34-year-old bricklayer with a long history of mental illness and erratic behavior, drove for six hours through Queens, shooting at red cars. He injured four people and killed Todd Upton, a 51-year-old UPS driver who had just dropped off his daughter at college. In 2022, Frank James wounded 10 people when he opened fire on a Brooklyn subway car. The police arrested him in Manhattan about 24 hours later. That same year, Andrew Abdullah was charged in the fatal shooting of Daniel Enriquez on a Q train.

Gun violence in the city, which spiked during the pandemic, has declined. Shootings dropped around 25 percent in the last six months compared with the same time period last year, Commissioner Caban said at a news conference last week. Those numbers include the first weeks of summer, when violent crime historically rises.

The attacks on Saturday began just after 11 a.m. when the police responded to a 911 call about a 21-year-old man shot in the left shoulder near the corner of Ashford Street and Arlington Avenue in Brooklyn, said Chief Joseph Kenny, an assistant chief at the police detective bureau, at the news conference. The man was taken to an area hospital and treated for his injuries.

Then, around 17 minutes later, the police received more 911 calls. This time they were about a man who had been shot around four miles away on Jamaica Avenue near 109th Street in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens.

Officers rushed to the scene where they found Mr. Saeidi, the police said on Sunday. He was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

While at the scene, the officers received an alert about another shooting one block away. Mr. Abreu had fired several rounds at a group of people near 108th Street and Jamaica Avenue, the police said on Sunday. No one was injured.

Eight minutes later, at 11:35 a.m., an assailant shot a third man one mile east at 126 Street and Hillside Avenue in Queens, the police said. The man, 44, who was shot in the face, was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in critical condition, Chief Kenny said.

A minute later, a 40-year-old man was almost struck by a bullet near the corner of 131st Street and Jamaica Avenue. Mr. Abreu was charged in that shooting. Then, at 11:37 a.m., a fourth man, 63, was shot in the right shoulder around eight blocks away. The man was taken to the hospital and treated for his injuries.

The scooter recovered at the scene of the shooting.Credit…New York City Police Department, via Associated Press

The 63-year-old man was identified as Jorge Balseca by his wife, Maria Cecilia Balseca. She described him as a quiet “homebody” shot as he was crossing the street, on his way to run errands for the day.

The shooter did not say a word to her husband, who did not see the man who shot him, Ms. Balseca said.

“The police said it was a crazy man shooting people,” Ms. Balseca, 66, said.

Mr. Balseca, who has lived in the same Jamaica neighborhood for 20 years, fell to the ground and was helped by an ice cream shop owner who knows him and his family. The shop owner called Ms. Balseca’s daughter, and word quickly spread among Mr. Basleca’s relatives, who rushed to the hospital.

“I thought he was dead,” Ms. Balseca said in Spanish.

On Sunday, Mr. Balseca, a retired hazardous materials cleaner, remained in the hospital in stable condition.

“We were in shock,” Ms. Balseca said. “We never thought something like this would happen to him. He doesn’t even go out at night.”

It soon became clear the incidents were connected, and the police began a search for the assailant, collecting witness accounts and security video to trace the path of the shooter, Chief Kenny said on Saturday.

At 1:10 p.m., about two hours after the first shooting, officers arrested Mr. Abreu at the corner of Sutphin Boulevard and 94th Avenue in Queens. The police found a 9-millimeter pistol and an extended magazine inside the scooter, Chief Kenny said.

Waseem Saeidi, Mr. Saeidi’s 38-year-old grandson, said he was supposed to go with his grandfather to Yemen.

Had he survived, his grandfather would have forgiven the shooter, the younger Mr. Saeidi said.

“Me,” he said. “I don’t forgive him.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

New York

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

Published

5 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

The Chinese government’s paranoia about overseas dissidents can seem strange, considering the enormous differences in power between exiled protesters who organize marches in America and their mighty homeland, a geopolitical and economic superpower whose citizens they have almost no ability to mobilize. But to those familiar with the Chinese Communist Party, the government’s obsession with dissidents, no matter where in the world they are, is unsurprising. “Regardless of how the overseas dissident community is dismissed outside of China, its very existence represents a symbol of hope for many within China,” Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests who spent years in prison before being exiled to the United States in 1998, told me. “For the Chinese Communist Party, the hope for change among the people is itself a threat. Therefore, they spare no effort in suppressing and discrediting the overseas dissident community — to extinguish this hope in the hearts of people at home.”

To understand the party’s fears about the risks posed by dissidents abroad, it helps to know the history of revolutions in China. “Historically, the groups that have overthrown the incumbent government or regime in China have often spent a lot of time overseas and organized there,” says Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University. The leader Sun Yat-sen, who played an important role in the 1911 revolution that dethroned the Qing dynasty and led eventually to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, spent several periods of his life abroad, during which he engaged in effective fund-raising and political coordination. The Communist Party’s own rise to power in 1949 was partly advanced by contributions from leaders who were living overseas. “They are very sensitive to that potential,” Weiss says.

“What the Chinese government and the circle of elites that are running China right now fear the most is not the United States, with all of its military power, but elements of unrest within their own society that could potentially topple the Chinese Communist Party,” says Adam Kozy, a cybersecurity consultant who worked on Chinese cyberespionage cases when he was at the F.B.I. Specifically, Chinese authorities worry about a list of threats — collectively referred to as the “five poisons” — that pose a risk to the stability of Communist rule: the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, followers of the Falun Gong movement, supporters of Taiwanese independence and those who advocate for democracy in China. As a result, the Chinese government invests great effort in combating these threats, which involves collecting intelligence about overseas dissident groups and dampening their influence both within China and on the international stage.

Controlling dissidents, regardless of where they are, is essential to China’s goal of projecting power to its own citizens and to the world, according to Charles Kable, who served as an assistant director in the F.B.I.’s national security branch before retiring from the bureau at the end of 2022. “If you have a dissident out there who is looking back at China and pointing out problems that make the entire Chinese political apparatus look bad, it will not stand,” Kable says.

The leadership’s worries about such individuals were evident to the F.B.I. right before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Kable told me, describing how the Chinese worked to ensure that the running of the Olympic flame through San Francisco would not be disrupted by protesters. “And so, you had the M.S.S. and its collaborators deployed in San Francisco just to make sure that the five poisons didn’t get in there and disrupt the optic of what was to be the best Olympics in history,” Kable says. During the run, whose route was changed at the last minute to avoid protesters, Chinese authorities “had their proxies in the community line the streets and also stand back from the streets, looking around to see who might be looking to cause trouble.”

New York

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Published

13 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Thursday proposed several measures that would restrict hedge funds and private-equity firms from buying up large numbers of single-family homes, the latest in a string of populist proposals she intends to include in her State of the State address next week.

The governor wants to prevent institutional investors from bidding on properties in the first 75 days that they are on the market. Her plan would also remove certain tax benefits, such as interest deductions, when the homes are purchased.

The proposals reflect a nationwide effort by mostly Democratic lawmakers to discourage large firms from crowding out individuals or families from the housing market by paying far above market rate and in cash, and then leasing the homes or turning them into short-term rentals.

Activists and some politicians have argued that this trend has played a role in soaring prices and low vacancy rates — though low housing production is widely viewed as the main driver of those problems.

If Ms. Hochul was inviting a fight with the real estate interests who have backed her in the past, she did not seem concerned. She even borrowed a line from Jimmy McMillan, who ran long-shot candidacies for governor and mayor as the founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.

“The cost of living is just too damn high — especially when it comes to the sky-high rents and mortgages New Yorkers pay every month,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement.

James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said his team would review the proposal, but characterized it as “another example of policy that will stifle investment in housing in New York.”

The plan — the specifics of which will be negotiated with the Legislature — is one of several recent proposals the governor has made with the goal of addressing the state’s affordability crisis. Voters have expressed frustration about the high costs of housing and basic goods in the state. This discontent has led to political challenges for Ms. Hochul, who is likely to face rivals in the 2026 Democratic primary and in the general election.

In 2022, five of the largest investors in the United States owned 2 percent of the country’s single-family rental homes, most of them in Sun Belt and Southern states, according to a recent report from the federal Government Accountability Office. The report stated that it was “unclear how these investors affected homeownership opportunities or tenants because many related factors affect homeownership — e.g., market conditions, demographic factors and lending conditions.”

Researchers at Harvard University found that “a growing share of rental properties are owned by business entities and medium- and large-scale rental operators.”

State officials were not able to offer a complete picture of how widespread the practice was in New York. They said local officials in several upstate cities had told them about investors buying up dozens of homes at a time and turning them into rentals.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that investment firms were buying smaller buildings in places like Brooklyn and Queens from families and smaller landlords.

Ms. Hochul’s concern is that these purchases make it harder for first-time home buyers to gain a foothold in the market and can lead to more rental price gouging.

“Shadowy private-equity giants are buying up the housing supply in communities across New York, leaving everyday homeowners with nowhere to turn,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “I’m proposing new laws and policy changes to put the American dream of owning a home within reach for more New Yorkers than ever before.”

Cracking down on corporate landlords became a prominent talking point in last year’s presidential election. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris called on Congress to pass previously introduced legislation eliminating tax benefits for large investors that purchase large numbers of homes.

“It can make it impossible then for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home,” Ms. Harris said last summer.

In August, Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging by private-equity firms in the housing market. He cited a study that estimated that private-equity firms “are expected to control 40 percent of the U.S. single-family rental market by 2030.”

Statehouses across the country have recently looked at ways to tackle corporate homeownership. One effort in Nevada, which passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, proposed capping the number of units a corporation could buy in a calendar year. It was opposed by local chambers of commerce and the state’s homebuilders association.

A bill was introduced in the Minnesota State Legislature that would ban the conversion of homes owned by corporations into rentals. It has yet to come up for a vote.

At the federal level, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, introduced joint legislation that would force hedge funds to sell all the single-family homes they own over 10 years.

New York

N.Y. Prosecutors Urge Supreme Court to Let Trump’s Sentencing Proceed

Published

21 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

N.Y. Prosecutors Urge Supreme Court to Let Trump’s Sentencing Proceed

New York prosecutors on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to deny President-elect Donald J. Trump’s last-ditch effort to halt his criminal sentencing, in a prelude to a much-anticipated ruling that will determine whether he enters the White House as a felon.

In a filing a day before the scheduled sentencing, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office called Mr. Trump’s emergency application to the Supreme Court premature, saying that he had not yet exhausted his appeals in state court. They noted that the judge overseeing the case plans to spare Mr. Trump jail time, which they argued undermined any need for a stay.

The prosecutors, who had secured Mr. Trump’s conviction last year on charges that he falsified records to cover up a sex scandal that endangered his 2016 presidential campaign, implored the Supreme Court to let Mr. Trump’s sentencing proceed.

“There is a compelling public interest in proceeding to sentencing,” they wrote, and added that “the sanctity of a jury verdict and the deference that must be accorded to it are bedrock principles in our Nation’s jurisprudence.”

The district attorney’s office has so far prevailed in New York’s appellate courts, but Mr. Trump’s fate now rests in the hands of a friendlier audience: a Supreme Court with a 6-to-3 conservative majority that includes three justices Mr. Trump appointed. Five are needed to grant a stay.

Their decision, coming little more than a week before the inauguration, will test the influence Mr. Trump wields over a court that has previously appeared sympathetic to his legal troubles.

In July, the court granted former presidents broad immunity for official acts, stymying a federal criminal case against Mr. Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election. (After Mr. Trump won the 2024 election, prosecutors shut down that case.)

The revelation that Mr. Trump spoke this week by phone with one of the conservative justices, Samuel A. Alito Jr., has fueled concerns that he has undue sway over the court.

Justice Alito said he was delivering a job reference for a former law clerk whom Mr. Trump was considering for a government position. But the disclosure alarmed ethics groups and raised questions about why a president-elect would personally handle such a routine reference check.

It is unclear whether Justice Alito will recuse himself from the decision, which the court could issue promptly.

Mr. Trump’s sentencing is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Friday in the same Lower Manhattan courtroom where his trial took place last spring, when the jury convicted him on all 34 felony counts.

If the Supreme Court rescues Mr. Trump on Thursday, returning him to the White House on Jan. 20 without the finality of being sentenced, it will confirm to many Americans that he is above the law. Almost any other defendant would have been sentenced by now.

“A sentencing hearing more than seven months after a guilty verdict is aberrational in New York criminal prosecutions for its delay, not its haste,” the prosecutors wrote.

The prosecutors also noted that Mr. Trump would most likely avoid any punishment at sentencing. The trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, has signaled he plans to show Mr. Trump leniency, reflecting the practical impossibility of incarcerating a president.

Still, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the sentencing could impinge on his presidential duties. It would formalize Mr. Trump’s conviction, cementing his status as the first felon to occupy the Oval Office.

That status, Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing to the Supreme Court, would raise “the specter of other possible restrictions on liberty, such as travel, reporting requirements, registration, probationary requirements and others.”

The court’s immunity ruling also underpinned Mr. Trump’s request to halt his sentencing. In the application, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that he was entitled to full immunity from prosecution — as well as sentencing — because he won the election.

“This court should enter an immediate stay of further proceedings in the New York trial court,” the application said, “to prevent grave injustice and harm to the institution of the presidency and the operations of the federal government.”

Mr. Trump’s application was filed by two of his picks for top jobs in the Justice Department: Todd Blanche, Mr. Trump’s choice for deputy attorney general, and D. John Sauer, his selection for solicitor general.

“Forcing President Trump to prepare for a criminal sentencing in a felony case while he is preparing to lead the free world as president of the United States in less than two weeks imposes an intolerable, unconstitutional burden on him that undermines these vital national interests,” they wrote.

Whether that argument will prevail is uncertain. Some legal experts have doubted the merits of Mr. Trump’s application, and lower courts have greeted his arguments with skepticism.

Earlier Thursday, a judge on the New York Court of Appeals in Albany, the state’s highest court, declined to grant a separate request from Mr. Trump to freeze the sentencing.

Prosecutors noted that Mr. Trump had yet to have a full appellate panel rule on the matter, and that he had not mounted a formal appeal of his conviction. Consequently, they argued, the Supreme Court “lacks jurisdiction over this non-final state criminal proceeding.”

Also this week, a judge on the First Department of New York’s Appellate Divison in Manhattan rejected the same request to halt the sentencing.

That judge, Ellen Gesmer, grilled Mr. Trump’s lawyer at a hearing about whether he had found “any support for a notion that presidential immunity extends to president-elects?”

With no example to offer, Mr. Blanche conceded, “There has never been a case like this before.”

In their filing Thursday, prosecutors echoed Justice Gesmer’s concerns, noting that “This extraordinary immunity claim is unsupported by any decision from any court.”

They also argued that Mr. Trump’s claims of presidential immunity fell short because their case concerned a personal crisis that predated his first presidential term. The evidence, they said, centered on “unofficial conduct having no connection to any presidential function.”

The state’s case centered on a sex scandal involving the porn star Stormy Daniels, who threatened to go public about an encounter with Mr. Trump, a salacious story that could have derailed his 2016 campaign.

To bury the story, Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen, negotiated a $130,000 hush-money deal with Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Trump eventually repaid him. But Mr. Cohen, who was the star witness during the trial, said that Mr. Trump orchestrated a scheme to falsify records and hide the true purpose of the reimbursement.

Although Mr. Trump initially faced sentencing in July, his lawyers buried Justice Merchan in a flurry of filings that prompted one delay after another. Last week, Justice Merchan put a stop to the delays and scheduled the sentencing for Friday.

Mr. Trump faced four years in prison, but his election victory ensured that time behind bars was not a viable option. Instead, Justice Merchan indicated that he would impose a so-called unconditional discharge, a rare and lenient alternative to jail or probation.

“The trial court has taken extraordinary steps to minimize any burdens on defendant,” the prosecutors wrote Thursday.