New York

Detectives investigating a string of muggings are furious about the latest attack - a Brooklyn elevator assault captured on video - in which an 85-year-old woman is choked unconscious, then robbed of her cane and purse, police sources said yesterday.

Thursday's assault is one of 12 in which the same suspect has struck, targeting primarily elderly woman by following them into their buildings in broad daylight. He grabs them by the throat, police said, then steals whatever they have - cash, credit cards, even a Bible in one case - before fleeing on a dark mountain bike.

Thursday's footage shows the victim, Lillian France, 85, fighting for her life as the suspect grabs her from behind by her neck and appears to lift her as she struggles to break free. Once he gains control, he leaves her facedown and unconscious, her straw hat by her side, then grabs her cane and purse, which contained $900 she had just withdrawn from a bank.

France, whose face is obscured throughout most of the video, still hasn't recovered. She's been in Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center since the attack with neck wounds, as well as other injuries.

When France reaches the elevator and gets in, he follows and they ride to the fifth floor, with the suspect pointing to the door for her to leave first in a phony act of chivalry, the video shows. He then grabs France by the neck and doesn't let go until he overpowers her. Anyone with information is asked to call police at 800-577-TIPS.

QUEENS - (WABC) -- A man is in custody this morning, arrested after he called 9-1-1 to report the throat-slashing murder of his ex-girlfriend.

Investigators were called to the scene in Queens just after 7:30 Monday night. That's when they learned the dead woman had brought her youngest son there for a visit with his father.

Police found the victim, 32-year-old Veronica Rivera, with her throat slashed, reportedly from ear-to-ear. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Rivera apparently had brought her 2-year-old child to the house for visitation with the child's father, Pedro Ayala. The two parents got into an argument that escalated into violence, police said.

Investigators said another of Rivera's children, a 9-year-old, also witnessed the murder. Police recovered the weapon, a knife, at the scene.

The godmother of the 3-year-old boy whose lifeless body was discovered in her Brooklyn apartment was arrested along with her boyfriend Saturday for allegedly torturing the child she was supposed to protect.

Nymeen Cheatham, 30, and Lemar Martin, 25, were charged with assault and endangering the welfare of a child Saturday and could face more serious charges - including murder, police said.

The medical examiner completed the autopsy on Kyle Smith's 28-pound body and determined he died of "multiple blunt impact injuries with soft tissue hemorrhages all over the body," a spokeswoman said.

She said she could not be more specific because it might interfere with the investigation.

The suspects were surrounded by two dozen neighbors screaming obscenities at them Saturday afternoon as they were led out of the 81st Precinct stationhouse to be taken to Central Booking.

Cops said three domestic incident reports had been filed at Cheatham's home from Dec. 11 to Jan. 2 - but none of them led to an arrest. The NYPD did not release details of those reports Saturday.

Cheatham apparently took custody of Kyle 18 months ago after a judge ordered the child be taken from his crack addict mother.

Neighbors said Cheatham and Martin frequently screamed at the boy, whose body was covered with bruises, rope burns and cigarette burns when paramedics found him in a Patchen Ave. apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Friday afternoon.

Investigators said that doctors at Interfaith Medical Center - where Kyle was pronounced dead on arrival - said the child had a broken leg and had been sodomized with a stick before he died.

Aisha Bristol, 27, was stabbed to death allegedly by her boyfriend near her Bed-Stuy home.
A Brooklyn mom strapping her baby boy into his car seat for a trip to a day care center was viciously murdered Monday by her boyfriend, cops said.

Police sources said Aisha Bristol, 27, was slashed across her throat about 7 a.m. on Hart St. near Lewis Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant by a man who later called police and confessed to the killing - before ingesting poison.

Cops found the mom lying dead next to the Toyota Yaris with a bloody kitchen knife nearby, as her 1-year-old son Nehemiah sat in his car seat.

Police sources said a 911 caller from Queens claimed he was the victim's boyfriend and took responsibility for the slaying. He then told cops he was going to drink bleach.

Cops found the man and rushed him to Jamaica Hospital, where he was expected to be charged, police sources said. He was not immediately identified.

Police sources said the couple appeared to have a troubled relationship. Bristol had filed an assault complaint against him in the past, the sources said.

Two years ago, Tunde Clement stepped off a bus at the city's main terminal downtown.
Clement, a black man, was carrying a backpack and coming from New York City. That may have been enough to pique the interest of undercover sheriff's investigators scanning the crowd with their eyes.

They cornered Clement and began peppering him with questions.

He was quickly handcuffed and falsely arrested. He was taken to a station to be strip-searched and then to a hospital, where doctors forcibly sedated him with a cocktail of powerful drugs, including one that clouded his memory of the incident.

A camera was inserted in his rectum, he was forced to vomit and his blood and urine were tested for drugs and alcohol. Scans of his digestive system were performed using X-ray machines, according to hospital records obtained by the Times Union.

The search, conducted without a search warrant, came up empty.

hnvestigators say a woman admitted to police in a bone-chilling confession on Monday to the drowning of her three children inside their home on Long Island, a home that child protective services visited on Friday, CBS 2 HD has learned.

On the day after the triple tragedy, flowers, teddy bears and three candles were left for the three lives extinguished, police say, by Leatrice Brewer, a mentally unstable mother.

Investigators say Jewel Ward, 6, Michael Demesyeaux, 5, and Innocent Demesyeaux, 18 months, died from a combination of drowning, poisoning and slashing. The clothed bodies were lined up neatly on a bed by a mother who is no stranger to the law.

"Nassau County killed these kids," said Innocent Demesyeux, 28, who claimed county authorities ignored his pleas to protect Michael, 5, and Innocent Jr., 18 months, from their "violent" mother, Leatrice Brewer, 27.

Demesyeux, an ambulette driver who has been estranged from Brewer since 2004 and was locked in a custody battle with her, said he warned authorities she had threatened to kill the children as recently as last week.

"She wanted to kill them," Demesyeux told the Daily News. "I let the court know that. But they took only one side."

He said Brewer called him on Wednesday or Thursday sounding "crazier than normal," claiming people on MTV were talking to her and saying "they were making fun of her on TV and that this Spanish woman put voodoo on her."

A custody hearing was scheduled for today in Mineola Family Court, and fear of losing custody also may have caused Brewer to "snap," said Desmesyeux.

A father who said he was upset with his teenage daughter for text-messaging a boy was arrested Saturday on charges of killing the girl, whose burned body was found stuffed in the boiler of his apartment building, police said.

The 34-year-old man called 911 Saturday morning, claiming he had strangled his 14-year-old daughter the night before because of the text messaging and had dumped her body in a wooded area, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The girl had been visiting Miguel Matias but lived in Pennsylvania with her mother and two sisters. The parents were separated, and Matias had visitation rights. He had a history of emotional problems and was institutionalized after trying to set a car on fire with children inside in Pennsylvania, Kelly said.

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — A woman in New York state sold a young girl to her landlord for sex to cover her overdue rent, federal authorities said.

Linda O'Connor, 46, also sold the girl to strangers twice at a hotel in 2006 and 2007, authorities said. The girl was 12 and 13 at the time of the alleged rapes.

O'Connor, who lives in the upstate New York town of Norwich, was arrested Sunday on federal charges of selling a child and other pornography counts. Assistant U.S. Attorney Miroslav Lovric said she could face up to life in prison.

O'Connor's former landlord, Dean Sacco, 49, of New Jersey, was also charged with having sex with the girl, crossing state lines to have sex with a minor and various pornography charges.

The girl told authorities that O'Connor and Sacco photographed the assaults. Now 14 and in foster care, she told police she faced homelessness and that Sacco threatened to kill her if she did not comply.

The girl told investigators Sacco had sex with her at least five times and that O'Connor took her to a hotel in December 2006 to have sex with a 40-year-old man for $150 while O'Connor watched. O'Connor later took her back to the hotel again to have sex with a second man, the girl said. After the second encounter, O'Connor took the girl Christmas shopping.

A 26-year-old woman was arrested Friday and accused of burning her 7-year-old son in an oven, and a day-care worker was arrested for not reporting his burns, police said.

Authorities began investigating the family in November after the boy was spotted alone at a shopping center and told police he had run away because "his mother had put him in an oven and burned him as a punishment," the police account said.

The mother, Tiffany Fraser, of Tallman, was charged with assault and endangering a child. The day-care worker, Joelle Lherisson, 37, of Airmont, was charged with failure to report child abuse.

Lt. Brad Weidel of the Town of Ramapo police force, which covers Airmont, said the boy's burns on his nose, arm, hand and left leg were noticed at the daycare center in July, but the owner did not report them. In November, a customer at a shopping center in Tallman called police about the same boy because he was unaccompanied.

When the boy reported the oven incident, he and a sibling were removed from their home by the Rockland County children's agency and police began an investigation that led to both arrests, Weidel said.

An 11-year-old Queens boy was shot in the chest Sunday night at the front door of his house by a cold-hearted gunman looking to take revenge on the child's teenage brother, cops said.

Tyshon Falconer, who was in critical but stable condition Sunday night, answered a ring at the door of his parents' Springfield Gardens home about 8:30 p.m. to find someone looking for his brother Tony, 16.

Tyshon said his brother wasn't home and tried to close the door, but not before the man fired a shot that went into his chest and through his back, cops said.

First, he burned his 3-year-old daughter's feet, and when the child whimpered from the untended wounds, he beat her to death with his cane, authorities said Friday.

Jason Marcelle lowered his head and said nothing as he limped out of Brooklyn's 79th Precinct stationhouse on the way to be arraigned on murder charges.

His bloody cane was held as evidence in the killing of little Tkai Marcelle in their Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment.

Marcelle beat Tkai in front of his three other children - ages 4, 3, and 2 months - in their Marcus Garvey Blvd. apartment, law enforcement sources said.

A Brooklyn birthday bash ended in murder yesterday when a clubgoer furious over drink prices hurled bottles at a bartender - and then fatally stabbed her 55-year-old father as he defended her, cops and relatives said.

Edwardo Carter screamed his wife's nickname - "Boo! Boo!" - as he collapsed in blood in front of her, their children and other shocked relatives after the 4:15 a.m. attack at Club Attraction in Stuyvesant Heights.

"Daddy! Daddy!" shouted his oldest daughter, Layisha Prados, 30, who rushed out from a nearby club office when she heard the glass bottles breaking near her younger sister.

The killer "just went crazy," she said. "My father tried to stop him, tried to calm him down, and he just stabbed my father in the chest."

Albert Springer, 35, also knifed a friend of the slaying victim as the knifeman tried escaping, but was restrained by partygoers until cops arrived, police said.

He gripped the knife so tight witnesses said he sliced off parts of two of his own fingers.

A seemingly intoxicated Springer began arguing with Carter's daughter Natasha, 26, who told him the bar was closed, cops and relatives of the victim said.

When she relented and poured Springer two cups of Hennessy for $10, he went berserk at the price, cops said.

He tossed bottles at her, then jumped over the bar and plunged a knife in Carter's chest, cops said.

A Halloween sex fiend dressed as a firefighter violently attacked and molested a Chelsea woman for 13 hours after lighting small blazes in her building and conning his way into her apartment, police sources said yesterday.
"FDNY! We have a report of smoke and I am here to make sure there is no fire in your apartment," the disguised man told the woman after rapping on her door, the sources said.

Moments after stepping inside her W.24th St. apartment, the pervert jammed a gun to the 34-year-old woman's head and used a rag soaked in chemicals to knock her out as her neighbors fled the fires.

"It was all a cover so he could bang on her door and get inside," a police source said. "He bum-rushed her, kept her drugged and stayed the night."

He videotaped himself violating her, then forced her to try on clothes and shoes and photographed it, sources said. He also brought multiple pairs of latex gloves and a garbage bag to dispose of them.

The woman regained consciousness several times, only to be knocked out again. At one point, her friends even came to pick her up for a party, but she didn't answer the door.

The heinous attack ended around 7a.m. yesterday when the pervert left and the woman awoke to find her hands loosely bound and tape over her mouth, the sources said. The victim, who had chemical burns on her face, was treated at a local hospital.