An Execution over an Argument

Colin Fleming
January 13, 2010

Photo Credit: NYPD

Annette Riley and Assistant District Attorney Leah Takantzas were getting ready to leave for the day. The closing arguments were finished and the jury in Bronx Supreme Court had started deliberating. Takantzas and Riley had their coats on when the court officer came into the hallway. The jury had reached a verdict.

It was January 27, 2006, more than two years after Annette’s son Sean was shot in her sister Margaret’s house in the East Bronx on Dec. 8, 2003. The first trial had ended with a hung jury. Now this jury had come back after no more than 40 minutes. For Takantzas, this was not a good sign. Continue Reading

Lora-Arzu case tragic for both sides

It sounded like a “sawed-off shotgun blast” outside the window.

Raphael Lora, 41, was sitting in his kitchen with his wife, Beatriz, and her friend, Damaris Marrero. Upon hearing the blast, Lora ran downstairs from his second floor apartment on the corner of Hewitt Place and Longwood Avenue in the Longwood section of the Bronx. It was a cool night on May 18, 2007, and the street’s pavement was glistening after a light rain fell a couple of hours earlier. Lora threw on a blue fleece jacket, and attached the holster for his 9 mm Glock semi-automatic pistol to his belt.

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Local business drops in new stadium’s first year

Photo Credit: Andrew Lampard

It was the top of the sixth inning in the first game of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies and Joe Bastone’s Yankee Tavern was at half-capacity.

The start of the game had been better. “It was busy, not crazy,” said Bastone, 52, the owner and president of the famous Bronx bar and restaurant. Considering the current economic climate, the bar’s crowd may have been a surprise. But this was no ordinary baseball game. Continue Reading

A slip and fall turns into $150,000

By Frances McInnis
November 15, 2009

Whoever coined the phrase “fashion victim” probably didn’t have this in mind.

Roberto Cavalli, the Italian fashion house known for its sumptuous evening gowns, is facing a potentially costly personal injury lawsuit from a man who fell and fractured his ankle in front of its Madison Avenue store in December 2003. Papa Diop, 43, is also suing Madison Immobilier, LLC, which owns the building at the corner of East 63^rd Street and Madison Avenue. Continue Reading