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Saturday, June 23, 2012

What’s it All About Andy?

Mets Walk All Over Pettitte
(Photos by Gary Quintal)


BRONX, NEW YORK, June 23- Yanks fans are left shaking their heads after the improbable loss to the Mets as the Amazin’s win their first game in the Subway Series. What is most troubling is the fact that old reliable Andy Pettitte gave up five runs in the first inning. 
Although Pettitte settled down after the first inning massacre, the damage was done. 
Then a ninth inning rally was thwarted by Frank “They’re All a Bunch of Chickens” Francisco. The ace struck out Curtis Granderson leaving the tying runs on the base.
The Mets went on to win it 6-4.


Friday, June 22, 2012

Bronx News (Bxnews.net): Burn in Hell

Bronx News (Bxnews.net): Burn in Hell: Mother to Son's Killers: ‘Burn in Hell’ By David Greene BRONX, NEW YORK, June 19- For the first time, the mother of murder...

Burn in Hell


Mother to Son's Killers: ‘Burn in Hell’

By David Greene
BRONX, NEW YORK, June 19- For the first time, the mother of murder victim Jorge Arrango is speaking about her son and his brutal killing along E. Gun Hill Road, where the 20-year old, well liked young man grew up and was mortally wounded on May, 18.
Jeanette Febles, 55, the victim’s mother spoke exclusively to this
publication and offered insight into her life that has been turned
upside down, since the brutal beating and knife attack in which he was stabbed a reported 15-times in the chest, arms and legs-- all caught on surveillance video run by a local community watch program.
Currently undergoing cancer treatment, Febles must stand strong for Arrango's two brothers and six sisters, as they prepare to face life without Arrango, and an eventual trial when they must all come to face Ramon Sanchez and Luis Davis, who late last week were charged with murder.
After his death the grief-stricken mother returned to the Carib Restaurant at the corner of E. Gun Hill Road and Jerome Avenue, where she and her son would often have dinner after attending mass at St. Ann's Church on Bainbridge Avenue, searching for answers to this new puzzle she lives with every waking moment of her day.
Febles recalled the fateful night, saying, "He was with a friend of his, they came to my house and he said, "Mom, give me some money and I'll be right back," and he met with these people he met a month ago."
She continued, "One of the guys started arguing with my son," so she gave him the money.
Recalling the events leading up to her sons fatal confrontation,
Febles states, "You don't want to deal with it, they cut people, you don't know what there going to do. So the other guy pushed him and was antagonizing him, and then someone punched him."
Arrango knew little of life outside of the family apartment he shared with his brothers and sisters or the Norwood neighborhood where he was raised, with the exception of a recent and unexpected trip to Europe.
Now recalling her son, Febles says that Arrango attended public school at P.S. 94 across the street, but did not make it to high school as a severe case of asthma would sideline the youngster and he was forced to drop out of school. Later on he would get a high school equivalency diploma and get a certificate to become a home health aid.
"He didn't go to high school," Febles recalls, "most of his life he
was sick with asthma at home, so he flunked a lot of courses... a lot of times he flunked the grade because he was sick all the time."
Determined to give her son a proper burial, Febles says, "I made
arrangements, but I'm still collecting money," having recently visited Woodlawn Cemetery and was floored to learn that a modest sendoff to her beloved son would cost roughly $20,000. $7,000 for the funeral,$10,000 for the funeral home and $3,000 for the headstone.
She says, "I can't afford that, so I started collecting. I can't even
think, their doing it for me," referring to family members and
friends throughout the neighborhood, who continue to pay their
respects at the building where the memorial has been set up, that is quickly growing and turning into a shrine to Arrango.
Asked if the mother needs help, she replies, "Yes I do, it's too much and I can't afford that."
In more recent years, Febles says her son's health eventually improved to where he could take his General Equivalency Exam and pass the course to earn his home health aid attendant certificate, when he went to care for an elderly retired doctor in upper Manhattan.
Febles explains, "Unfortunately the patient died and he was very
effected by this, this was last year. The man left him some money, so he went to France, he visited Europe."
She continued, "When he came back he says, "Mom, I can't be a home health attendant anymore," he could not deal with the fact that the patients die. He got used to seeing the man everyday and enjoyed helping him."
On the day he died he had a job interview in Yonkers, where the young man expected to get a call back, as soon as the boss returned from vacation.
In the days since the stabbing, she agreed for doctors to remove
Arrango from life-support, Febles recalls, "His brothers and sisters are all crying. They come and see me and they go out to the card shop and they go out to the alley," where the make-shift memorial to the young man now stands.
The mother then paused and added, "and they don't know what to do with themselves."
The mom says her son was the, "center," of the family as, "he liked to party and get into every person's situation. He wanted to know what a person was doing or what they could do together."
Family members will miss the young man's casual singing in the apartment and his sketch's as Arrango also loved to draw.
A religious woman, Febles is asked if she could speak to her son's killers, what would she say, responding, "I don't like to be mean or bad but I just hope, and I know... I hope that they would burn in hell for eternity, that's all I can say."
Providing her health holds up, Febles expects to be in the courtroom with all of her daughters, but does not want the trial to, "sidetrack" her surviving children's own families, anymore than it has too.  












Thursday, June 21, 2012

Questionable practice







Engel Took Out Co-op Loan with ‘Slumlord’ Donor?

By Michael Horowitz
BRONX, NEW YORK, June 21- When most people need a mortgage, they go to a bank or another financial institution.
But that's not what Rep. Eliot Engel did when he needed a loan for the purchase of the two-bedroom cooperative apartment he maintains at 3725 Henry Hudson Parkway in Riverdale.
The Congressman engaged in a questionable ethical practice, which required the approval of the Ethics Committee, before he could accept a mortgage loan from a long-time campaign contributor and business partner.
Engel, whose district lines were recently redrawn to include Co-op City, engaged in a questionable ethical practice to help pay for the Riverdale apartment.  
The long-time Congressman, who has engaged in other seemingly questionable practices over the years, bought the apartment for $280,000 on Feb. 14 of last year, taking out a cooperative loan of between $100,000 and $250,000 with Harry Bajraktari, his Albanian-American business partner, the Congressman's most recent financial-disclosure statement notes.
A comprehensive disclosure of assets and liabilities, revealing information that members of Congress could hide in the past, was not required until this year.
The existence of the loan from Bajraktari, a prominent leader in the Albanian-American community, was first revealed in Engel's financial-disclosure statement for 2011, which he filed on May 15 of this year.
In 2009, Engel was caught misrepresenting his home at 9925 Conestoga Way in Potomac Village, MD, as his primary home in order to get a homestead-tax deduction.
When he was caught taking the illegal deduction, Engel stopped the practice, but state officials in Maryland did not require him to return the $7,000 in deductions that he had claimed in deductions over the prior decade.
When he first ran for Congress in the 1990s, Engel enlisted the help of Louis Moscatiello, a mobster union leader who was convicted of labor racketeering and subsequently served a jail sentence for his crimes.







Bronx News (Bxnews.net): Slumlord Congressman?

Bronx News (Bxnews.net): Slumlord Congressman?: Engel Owns Building with Illegal Apt., Mice  By Michael Horowitz BRONX, NEW YORK, June 21- Harry Bajraktari, a promine...

Slumlord Congressman?







Engel Owns Building with Illegal Apt., Mice 


By Michael Horowitz
BRONX, NEW YORK, June 21- Harry Bajraktari, a prominent Albanian-American who loaned Rep. Eliot Engel between $100,000 and $250,000 for the purchase of a two-bedroom cooperative apartment in Riverdale, owns a building with the Congressman at 1142 Metcalf Ave.
In the Bronx building, in which Engel has a 24-percent stake, a family had lived in an illegal basement apartment for seven years until building inspectors for the city's Department of Housing, Preservation Development (HPD) started citing the building for the illegal apartment and the matter came under scrutiny in the Daily News, City News, and the Bronx News.
Bajraktari and Engel, through the E&J Realty company that Engel's business partner set up, purchased the three-story apartment at 1142 Metcalf Ave. for $430,000 in 2008. Engel's investment of $30,000 reportedly bought him a 24-percent stake in the building.
HPD inspectors started citing the building for its illegal basement apartment in February 2009. As of last summer, the violation for the illegal apartment remained in effect. 
Over the last three elections, Bajraktari, his partners, and his family have contributed $72,000 to the Congressman's campaigns.
A City News probe of the illegal basement apartment showed a family of eight living there in substandard conditions. The apartment was clearly a firetrap because it didn't have the egresses that are required under city law.
The family, whose identity City News shielded, had complained about mice, worms, rats, roaches, mold and protruding pipes, as we as wall and ceiling cracks.
Ironically, the family's complaints about their apartment led to a Housing Court decision that required them to move out by Aug. 1 of last year.
City News, in its inspection of the apartment last summer, showed that the apartment, which had three tiny bedrooms, had windows that could not be opened in the event of a fire or another emergency. The lack of easy egress reportedly made the apartment an illegal firetrap.
The husband in the apartment at the time, who paid $900 per month for it, charged that the apartment was kept up better before Bajraktari and Engel bought it.
The husband, who acted as an agent for the landlord before Bajraktari and Engel bought it, said that he acted in the role of superintendent when the previous landlord owned it.
“Things went downhill after Harry (Bajraktari) bought the building,” the husband said. “He tried to get us to pay more rent, but we refused, given the fact that we were living in an illegal apartment that wasn't being properly maintained.”






Bronx News (Bxnews.net): Let Them Eat Cake!

Bronx News (Bxnews.net): Let Them Eat Cake!: COMMUNITY BOARD NEWS N’ VIEWS by Father Richard F. Gorman Chairman Community Board #12 (The Bronx)   “Qu’...