Category Archives: New York
UPDATE on Bongo, the missing doll from New York
Bongo, the stuffed 8 inch monkey, must be magical. The original owners are more than thrilled to be reunited with Bongo, and showed so by providing the person who found him $500. And get this… the man who found him also “fell in love” with the doll and excited that the couple will allow him to visit the doll. What the F***?!
Here’s the full story:
He’s back, Bongo is back – just days after going missing, proving you should never lose faith in human nature.
A New York couple who were upset over the loss of a stuffed toy monkey they’ve raised like a son the past decade have been reunited with him.
‘I never gave up hope – I prayed, and now he’s with us again,’ said Bonni Marcus.
We'll eat and drink to that: Jack Zinzi and Bonni Marcus at their celebratory dinner after being reunited with Bongo
Bonni, 47, along with friend Jack Zinzi, 58, were devastated after losing Bongo on their way to a restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on August 1.
The 8in doll was found Tuesday by Luis Barreto, 61, an unemployed Park Slope man, who discovered it sitting on a parking meter.
But unaware that it belonged to the couple and had gone missing, and finding it very cute, Mr Barreto brought it back to his Brooklyn home, where he put it on a stereo speaker.
The New York Post reports that Bongo was only reunited with his ‘parents’ after they hanging more fliers near Mr Barreto’s home pleading for Bongo’s return.
Mr Zinzi approached Mr Barreto and some other men and told them about Bongo and the cash reward they were offering.
Mr Barreto realised he had Bongo and took the couple back to his place for an emotional reunion.
Miss Marcus, who teaches English as a second language at a Manhattan private school said she ‘felt Bongo’s presence’ while approaching the apartment.
But she said she had to closely examine the monkey to make sure it was Bongo.
She confirmed this through the doll’s identifying marks, including a burn scar she had accidentally given it while smoking a cigar five years ago.
‘I was devastated and gave up smoking after it,’ she said.
Help me get home: Bonni and Jack had plastered the posters around New York in a bid to find Bongo
The couple presented Mr Barreto with the $500 reward they publicly promised for whoever found Bongo.
Mr Barreto said: ‘I fell in love with Bongo and wanted to keep him. He looked real to me.’
Ultimately, he said he caved in after seeing how ‘heartbroken’ Marcus was and being promised he could visit the doll.
He celebrated with the couple at El Gran Castillo de Jagua – the same Brooklyn eatery Marcus and Zinzi were heading to August 1 when Bongo accidently fell out of Zinzi’s pocket.
MailOnline told last wek how the couple plastered fliers all over New York withn the words ‘Please help get home.’
The pair said Bongo had been a constant companion for 10 years.
Angry son drives dad’s minivan into Central Park pond
Tomas E. Gaston - POND SCUM: A seemingly crazed driver careened through Central Park and intentionally put his dad's van in the lake.
New York Post - An angry driver intentionally drove his father’s minivan into a Central Park pond this afternoon, sending picnickers and sun-worshippers fleeing in panic.
“F–k that car!” the driver — whom cops identified as Anthony Romo, 30 — told an eyewitness of the green Nissan Quest. “It’s my father’s car. He loves that car more than he loves me,”he said, echoing a line from the classic “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
He faces reckless driving and reckless endangerment charges.
Rodney Robertson, who was sitting on a blanket in the park with his wife and 9-year-old daughter, rushed to help Romo as the van sank in water near East Drive and 106th Street.
ANTHONY ROMO - In custody
“He looked more despondent than disoriented,” said Scott Jefferson, a lifeguard who was
at the nearby Lasker Pool when the driver gunned the car into the pond.
The driver was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in stable condition.
“I’m in shock about it,” said Robertson, 45. “I have to admit that this blew the day a bit.”
Buddhist monk ‘kept housekeeper as slave for 12 years under the threat of death’
Dailymail - A housekeeper has accused her former employers, a Korean Buddhist monk and his family, of keeping her as a prisoner in their homes in Queens, New York, for 12 years and forcing her to work as their ‘slave’ under a threat of death.
The housekeeper, Oak-Jin Oh, 60, alleges that the family forced her to work long hours without pay, deprived her of medical care when she was sick and ‘usually’ refused to give her a bedroom or a bed to sleep in.
The family allowed her to go out to buy groceries from time to time but they used threats to dissuade her from reporting her situation to the authorities, according to the lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Manhattan.
Miss Oh ‘was threatened with reputational harm, physical harm and death,’ the lawsuit says.
The suit names the family patriarch, Soo Bok Choi, a Buddhist monk, as a defendant, as well as two of Mr Choi’s brothers, his son and daughter, a niece and the personal representative of the estate of his mother, who died in 2009.
Miss Oh’s lawyers said court papers have been served to three of the defendants, but they have been unable to locate the others.
Miss Oh is a Korean immigrant and is being represented by the Asian American Legal Defence and Education Fund and the New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell.
According to the lawsuit, Ms. Oh was introduced to the Choi family in 1998 by an employment placement agency in South Korea.
Mr Choi said he was looking for someone to work in his family’s home and in his temple in New York, the complaint says.
Miss Oh agreed to travel to the United States to work for the family in exchange for a monthly wage of 1.3 million Korean won, equivalent to about $1,200 at current exchange rates.
Mr Choi flew with Miss Oh to Toronto, the lawsuit says, then smuggled her across the border into New York ‘under the cover of night’ in a small boat, the New York Times reports.
Over the next 12 years, the Choi family ‘harboured’ Miss Oh in homes around Queens, including in Elmhurst, Little Neck, Bayside, Flushing and Whitestone, according to the complaint.
She said she never had a day off, often working 14 hours a day or more.
Miss Oh was also forced to work at the family’s Buddhist temple, which operated out of the family’s house in Little Neck until about 2001, the complaint says.
The lawsuit claims that the Choi family intimidated Miss Oh into remaining quiet about her situation and made her completely dependent on them by taking her passport, withholding her pay, limiting her contact with others, monitoring her telephone calls and generally isolating her from the rest of society.
Mr Choi ‘also told Ms. Oh that he could easily pay to have someone kill her,’ and frequently threatened to report her to immigration authorities and have her deported, the lawsuit says.
She was finally able to escape “with the assistance of a Good Samaritan,” a friend of the family who visited the Choi home and took pity on the woman, said one of Ms. Oh’s lawyers, Ivy Suriyopas.
Through an interpreter, Miss Oh said: ‘This man calls himself a monk, but to me, he is a criminal.
‘He stole 12 years of my life even though I worked hard for him and his family.
‘It’s not right to look down on the weak and cause them damage just because you have power and status.’
Missing Doll: Cash Reward $500
MISSING LINK: Bonni Marcus holds a flier yesterday in Brooklyn pleading for help finding her lost stuffed monkey, Bongo, and she's offering a $500 reward.
In New York City, Bonni Marcus and Jack Zinzi are frantic over losing their doll, Bongo. So frantic, in fact, that they’ve taken to the streets and started plastering ‘Missing’ posters all over town.
On Sunday night they had decided to go to their favorite restaurant on Fifth Avenue and shortly after sitting down, they realized he was gone.
Jack, 58, told The Brooklyn Paper: ‘I walked over to the restaurant, sat down, ordered the food, and reached into my pocket to put Bongo on the table – and saw that he was gone.
‘I tore the car apart. I was in a bad way. Bongo really means a lot to me, so I kind of broke down.
‘It happened so fast, because I couldn’t have been in the restaurant 10 minutes before I realised he was gone.
Disabled Man Dies After Being Left in Van During Heat Wave By Social Worker
By: Kelli Knight
Eason Alonzio, 48, was found dead by police “inside a Ford van parked on Lexington Avenue, in Harlem, but are yet to confirm the exact cause of death.”
Apparently the staff had dropped all of the other passengers off but forgot about Alonzio. He was left in a Ford Van that in 90 degree weather, and it assumed that he died from being trapped in severe heat for about 6 hours.
The worker who was driving this vehicle is an absolute idiot. Mothers who leave their children is sometimes a mistake and I can understand that (somewhat), but someone whose job is to drop off people should most certainly be aware of who is still in the vehicle. Granted New York has been having a heat wave that has left several dead.
True Blood’s Kristin Bauer: “Stick around, it gets better”
I absolutely adore Kristin Bauer in True Blood as Pamela, but now I enjoy her even more! This is a truly great recollection of hard times and overcoming them. She is incredibly intelligent and well-spoken and I encourage anyone going through anything rough watch this. Or, just watch if you enjoy Bauer, because she is an amazing story teller!
A Fugitive Taunts Cops on Facebook Only To Get Caught
Gawker – Taunting police on Facebook when they’re out searching for you is, admittedly, pretty funny. But if you’re going to do it, it’s important that you not get caught. Otherwise you end up like recently-apprehended fugitive Victor Burgos: In jail, and looking really dumb.
Burgos was wanted on domestic violence and harassment warrants in Utica, N.Y. when he posted a “video showing him walking into an unidentified NYPD stationhouse,” writing “Catch me if you can, I’m in Brooklyn.” So… they did. U.S. Marshals and NYPD arrested Burgos in a Brooklyn apartment, catching him, not coincidentally, at his laptop dicking around on Facebook. He’s now awaiting a hearing in Oneida County. And he deleted the posts from his Facebook account.
This guy is hilarious. Why in hell would you tempt the cops to come and get you, while providing them with your location? I hope he’s aware that you can’t use Facebook while in prison, since he seems to be quite enthralled with the website.
Watching ‘Law & Order’ Doesn’t Make You A Professional
Gawker – There’s a specific kind of person who thinks, after watching tons of procedural justice TV shows, that he could commit the perfect crime. And there’s an even more specific kind of person who actually can. Enacting an elaborate plot to frame his ex-girlfriend for armed robbery, Queens resident Jerry Ramrattan almost became the latter.
According to the New York Times, Seemona Sumasar says Ramrattan “cornered her, taped her mouth shut, and raped her” while they were in a relationship. Apparently Sumasar, a former Morgan Stanley analyst and restaurateur, had realized that Ramrattan was a compulsive liar. A Law & Order and CSI fanatic, he pretended to be employed as a police investigator for the duration of their relationship. Sumasar pressed charges for the rape. Ramrattan made bail. Soon thereafter, he launched his alleged revenge plot:
They said he coached the supposed victims, driving them past Ms. Sumasar’s house so that they could describe her Jeep Grand Cherokee and showing them her photo so they could pick her out of a police lineup.
The setup began in September 2009, prosecutors said. An illegal immigrant from Trinidad told the police that he had been handcuffed and robbed of $700 by an Indian woman who was disguised as a police officer and had a gun, according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Mr. Ramrattan had persuaded the immigrant to lie, telling him that he could receive a special visa for victims of violent crimes.
Other “victims” came forward with similar stories. Some clues made it look like Sumasar had been covering her tracks. So, even though Sumasar had an alibi and phone records to back it up, she ended up with a $1 million bail after her arrest, forcing her to languish behind bars while Ramrattan went free. Eventually an “informant” blew the whistle; now Sumasar is in the clear and Ramrattan is awaiting trial for rape and conspiracy. His defense: She framed him. Double frame job!
Sumasar is planning lawsuits against the police departments of New York City and Nassau County. The Queen District Attorney marveled, “in the collective memory, no one has ever seen anything like this before.”
The Chimp That Was Raised As A Human
A few years back in 1973, a project was put together to try and study Chimpanzees and see if they could act like humans and use American Sign Language to communicate. Nim, the chimp that was taken from his mother early on and raised in a human household died in 2000 after being shuffled around due to his aggressive behavior that became more apparent over the years.
Nim Chimpsky started this process with Stephanie LaFarge in upper Manhattan. LaFarge had other children that were raised along side Nim and she truly grew attached to him. Unfortunately, after some years he was biting the other children and acting out, much like a wild animal. Jenny Lee was one of LaFarge’s children, who was 13 at the time that Nim was brought to them. She recalls good memories, but she also recalls the biting and aggressiveness.
NPR – “While Jenny and her siblings went to school, Nim learned sign language with researchers at Columbia University. The goal was to open up a window into Nim’s thoughts and to see if he could develop real language skills. When he came home each night, Nim would play with the Lee children and mimic their behavior. But as he aged, he became more aggressive — and no one knew what to do.”
Eventually he was moved to private grounds at the University of Oklahoma, where he met Bob Ingersoll. Mr. Ingersoll quickly became attached to Nim and the two became quick friends. In fact, “While taking long walks around the grounds of the primate facility, Ingersoll occasionally smoked pot with Nim, who had been introduced to marijuana in New York City and even appeared in the magazine High Times in 1975.” Ingersoll had said that Nim “actually signed ‘stone smoke time now’ to us first”.
After spending nearly nine years with Nim, Ingersoll had to see him be moved to a research facility, which he eventually helped rescue him from. Here, Nim was living in a cage, which this human-like chimp was never accustomed to (not that any animal should be). After the rescue, he was moved to another facility, but this time the ranch was for abused animals.
The FULL STORY can be found here.