88-year-old woman found bludgeoned to death in her home, her body surrounded with groceries

NORMAN/NORMAN Y. LONO

An 88-year-old woman was found bludgeoned to death in her apartment.

An 88-year-old Bronx woman who covered herself in gold jewelry was found bludgeoned to death inside her apartment Saturday — her bloody body surrounded by fresh groceries, cops said.

Investigators believe Evelyn Shapiro might have been the victim of a violent push-in robbery.

Shapiro’s daughter discovered her body inside her fifth-floor apartment in the Pelham Parkway housing project about 9:55 a.m. and dialed 911.

Shapiro’s front door was open and unlocked, a police source said.

The senior, who suffered severe trauma to the head, was pronounced dead on the scene.

So much blood poured from her body that cops originally thought she had been shot, a source said.

“That is monstrous to kill an old lady like that,” said Maria Lopez Cayon, of Long Island, whose 82-year-old mother lives one floor above Shapiro.

NORMAN/NORMAN Y. LONO

An 88-year-old woman was found bludgeoned to death in her apartment.

Cops were hunting for Shapiro’s killer, who they believe might have followed her into her apartment.

“We’ll find where she bought the groceries and retrace her steps,” a police source said.

“It looks like someone followed her in.”

Shaken neighbors speculated that Shapiro was targeted because of her penchant for wearing gold necklaces and rings.

“She wore an insane amunt of jewelry,” said Lisa Velez, 48. “I asked her why . . . She said she was afraid to leave it in her apartment.”

The gruesome murder stunned her neighbors.

“We’re in shock,” said neighbor Marilyn Delgado, 49. “She was a nice lady. Who could be so stupid to do this?”

“You’re going to kill a lady?” added Delgado. “It could be your grandma. That’s sad.”

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. described Shapiro as a “well-known pillar of her community.”

“I call on anyone with information about this murder to come forward, so that we can put this savage behind bars,” Diaz Jr. added.

“Anyone who could so brutally take the life of an 88-year-old woman is a monster, has no place in our society, and the sooner they are off of our streets the better.”

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Woman shot dead by Brooklyn detective after trying to flee chaotic accident scene

The woman had blown three red lights, hit a minivan and then tried to escape

JOE MARINO FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Police investigate the scene after 23-year-old Shantel Davis, who was driving a stolen Toyota Camry, was shot to death at the corner of Church Ave. and E. 38th St. in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

A Brooklyn detective shot and killed an unarmed woman in a stolen car after she blew through three red lights, hit a minivan and tried to escape by driving in reverse, police said.

The incident unfolded about 5:40 p.m. in East Flatbush when two plainclothes narcotics cops spotted Shantel Davis, 23, at the wheel of a gray Toyota Camry she allegedly carjacked at gunpoint on June 5.

Davis — who had eight arrests on her rap sheet, sources said — ran a series of red lights along Church Ave. and crossed a double yellow line to pass cars at E. 38th St., where she smacked into the minivan, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

As the two cops approached the Camry, they saw Davis slide over to the passenger side, where the seat had been stripped out, and try to open the door.

One officer, who has been on the force six years, got hit by the door and was thrown backward, Browne said. Davis then got back in the driver’s seat, put the car in reverse and hit the gas, police said.

Simultaneously, another cop, identifed by sources as Detective Phillip Atkins, 44, was entering the driver’s side of the Camry, with his gun in hand.

“He’s attempting with the other hand to shift the gear into park,” Browne said.

“When she’s hitting the gas, a single round was discharged from his firearm, striking the woman in the chest.”

Browne said it was too soon to say whether the detective, who has 12 years on the force, meant to pull the trigger or if it was an accident.

JOE MARINO FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Onlookers weep at Church Ave. and E. 38th St. in Brooklyn Thursday evening after a woman driving a stolen car erratically was shot and killed on the street.

Witnesses described a scene of chaos before the shooting.

Dave McKenzie said he heard the cops yelling: “Get out! Get out!”

“They try to pull her out of the car, and she fights them,” McKenzie said, recalling the woman screaming, “Let me go! Let me go!”

“ ‘I don't want to be killed! Don’t kill me!’ ” the woman yelled, McKenzie added.

Lorraine Preddie, 61, said that after she heard the crash, she saw the detective in a blue NYPD T-shirt with a shield around his neck.

“The next thing I saw was the police officer took his gun out and fired a shot,” she said.

ROBERT MECEA FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Agitated woman protests to police Thursday night after the unarmed woman was killed in East Flatbush.

Witnesses said it was instantly clear the woman was gravely wounded.“She was bleeding, and then she just dropped. She fell on the floor facedown. She was shaking and the blood was just going out of her,” said one woman who works at a nearby laundermat.

“She was in the street,” Preddie said. “They started giving her chest compressions and took her in the ambulance.”

Davis died at Kings County Hospital. Councilman Jumaane Williams broke the news to her family.

Police said the owner of the Camry confirmed that Davis swiped the vehicle.

Davis, who was identified by family members, was due in court Friday on a kidnapping and attempted murder case stemming from a May 2011 attack.

ROBERT MECEA FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A woman lights a candle at a small memorial for Shantel Davis at the scene of the melee. 'She had her whole life in front of her,' said her cousin.

“This is like a bad dream,” said cousin Stephanie Gilmer, 40, who called Davis a “sweetie pie.”

“She was only 23. She had her whole life in front of her.”

Despite Davis’ criminal record, Assemblyman Nick Perry said he was concerned about the circumstances of her death “because the investigation I have seems to suggest this woman was not a threat.”

Mike Palladino, head of NYPD detectives union, backed Atkins, who had never fired his gun in the line of duty.

“Based on the facts and the circumstances, I’m confident that our detective’s actions were appropriate and justified,” Palladino said.

rparascandola@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/woman-clinging-life-shot-cops-brooklyn-article-1.1095976#ixzz1xs92czSl

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Chris Brown injured after getting into NYC bar brawl

The singer later tweeted a photo of a gash on his chin after the altercation

@CHRISBROWN/VIA TWITTER

Chris Brown (r.) tweeted a photo of a gash on his chin after getting into a bar fight with Drake and his entourage.

Volatile R&B star Chris Brown suffered a gash to his chin in a bottle-throwing brawl over Rihanna that erupted between his entourage and rapper Drake’s posse at a Manhattan nightclub, police sources said.

The wild fight, which left five people with lacerations, started about 4 a.m. Thursday at Club W.I.P. in the West Village — and was reportedly sparked by a comment about Rihanna, Brown’s ex-girlfriend.

According to a police source, a round of drinks with a note about the sultry singer was sent between the two groups before the fight began.

Brown — who famously assaulted Rihanna in 2009, leaving her bruised and bloody — posted a picture of his injury on his Twitter account, TMZ.com reported.

Brown added a message to the photo: “How u party with rich n------ that hate? Lol ... Throwing bottles like girls? #shameonya!”

The picture and the tweet were later taken down.

Police received a 911 call about a disorderly group at the basement club on Vandam St., but both Drake and Brown were gone by the time cops arrived.

Four of the people taken to local hospital were innocent bystanders, while the fifth was believed to be involved in the fight, police sources said.

Brown, in addition to taking a bottle to his chin, was also reportedly punched in the face by Drake’s forces, police sources said.

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USADA brings formal doping charges against Lance Armstrong; could strip 7 Tour de France titles

Armstrong confirms he received letter from agency accusing him of doping

Lance Armstrong confirms he receives a letter from U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accusing him of doping.

Lance Armstrong confirmed Wednesday afternoon that he received a letter from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accusing him of doping and banning him from future competitions, beginning a formal process that could strip the cycling legend of his seven Tour de France titles.

Armstrong received the letter from USADA Tuesday notifying him that blood samples the organization collected from him in 2009 and 2010 were “fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions,” the Washington Post first reported on its website.

Armstrong, who took up competitive triathlon after retiring from cycling in 2011, has consistently denied doping despite a growing mountain of circumstantial evidence that he used banned drugs and methods.

“I have been notified that USADA, an organization largely funded by taxpayer dollars but governed only by self-written rules, intends to again dredge up discredited allegations dating back more than 16 years to prevent me from competing as a triathlete and try and strip me of the seven Tour de France victories I earned,” Armstrong said in a statement. “These charges are baseless, motivated by spite and advanced through testimony bought and paid for by promises of anonymity and immunity.”

The action comes just months after a federal grand jury investigation overseen by prosecutors in the Central District of California was unexpectedly suspended without charges. The government gathered sworn testimony in that case linking the legendary cyclist to doping conspiracies.

USADA, a Colorado-based organization that monitors Olympic sports for doping, has been known to cooperate with federal agents in criminal litigation, including the litigation springing from the BALCO doping conspiracy. In the Armstrong case, USADA conducted its own investigation parallel to the federal one.

PETER DEJONG/AP

Travis Tygart, the group's CEO and president, issued a statement Wednesday in response to Armstrong’s statement, saying that “USADA only initiates matters supported by the evidence. We do not choose whether or not we do our job based on outside pressures, intimidation or for any reason other than the evidence.

“Our duty on behalf of clean athletes and those that value the integrity of sport is to fairly and thoroughly evaluate all the evidence available and when there is credible evidence of doping, take action under the established rules,” he continued.

Armstrong can elect to ask for a hearing on the charges, which would be heard by an independent panel of arbitrators, not USADA officials, who will then determine if the violations occurred.

USADA Lance Armstrong Charging Letter 06-12-2012

"Our hearts go out to Lance and his family as they face what can only be a very frustrating and difficult time as a result of USADA's actions," said Doug Ulman, the president and CEO of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the cyclist's nonprofit cancer awareness organization.

The news broke on the same day that a federal jury was deliberating over whether Armstrong's fellow Texan, Roger Clemens, lied to Congress in 2008 when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs. That case also saw close cooperation between federal agents with subpoena power and a non-governmental investigator.

In the Clemens case, former Senator George Mitchell was granted access to government witnesses.

Armstrong said in his statement Wednesday that USADA is repurposing the “very same charges and the same witnesses that the Justice Department chose not to pursue after a two-year investigation. ... Although USADA alleges a wide-ranging conspiracy extended over more than 16 years, I am the only athlete it has chosen to charge. USADA’s malice, its methods, its star-chamber practices, and its decision to punish first and adjudicate later all are at odds with our ideals of fairness and fair play.”

Armstrong continued, saying he has never doped, a constant refrain over his long career.

“I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one,” he said. “That USADA ignores this fundamental distinction and charges me instead of the admitted dopers says far more about USADA, its lack of fairness and this vendetta than it does about my guilt or innocence.”

USADA Lance Armstrong Charging Letter 06-12-2012

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High school senior wins $1,000 a week for life from New York Lottery

Brooklyn teen is the youngest winner ever of 'Win $1,000 a Week for Life' lottery game

TODD MAISEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Robert Salo, 18, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, won the “Win $1,000 A Week for Life” scratch-off game from the New York Lottery. He plans to go to college with the money. Salo posed for a photo Tuesday with lottery spokeswoman Gretchen Dizer.

A senior at Horndog High got lucky — for the rest of his life.

Robert Salo, who is just 18, got the graduation gift that keeps on giving when he

won the “Win $1,000 a Week for Life” scratch off game.

That means Salo, who came forward Tuesday, could collect more than $3 million before taxes if he lives to be 80 — the average life expectancy in the city.

“This is the first thing I’ve ever won,” said a grinning Salo, who is graduating this month from James Madison High School, a school infamous for its trysting teachers. “It’s a good way to start out life.”

Is it ever.

It’s also a big reversal of fortune for his single mom, who was wondering how to make her son’s college dreams come true: “We were kind of worried about paying for college,” Salo’s mom, Rabia, said. “I said if I had to work two jobs I would do it, but he’s going to the school he wants.”

Now neither son nor mother have to worry about that. But first, Salo’s getting some wheels.

“I’m definitely going to use it for college,” said Salo, who plans to go “out of state” but wouldn’t say where. “I’m going to invest in myself.”

Then, joking, he added, “Hopefully a nice car — something in my price range.”

Salo — who lives in Sheepshead Bay with his mom, a sibling and an uncle — was on the way to collect another set of wheels when he struck it rich May 15.

The family’s 2001 Volkswagen Jetta had been stolen and they were heading to the pound to pick it up, he said.

Salo said when they stopped at the BP station at the corner of Avenue T and Coney Island Avenue for gas, he bought a ticket.

“When I scratched it, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I thought it was a fake ticket. I had to ask them to pull over — I couldn’t drive and show them at the same time.”

Salo said the whole experience of winning so much money was surreal.

“It felt like I was in a dream,” he said. “Even after a couple of days it felt like a dream. I couldn’t sleep. I was just walking around at home. I wasn’t hungry or anything.”

Rabia Salo admits she’s biased, but she believes fortune couldn’t have smiled on a better young man.

“I’m excited for him,” the happy mom said. “He deserves it. He’s a good kid.”

Word of Salo’s good luck electrified James Madison High, which up till now was best known as the school where two female teachers were once found naked cavorting in a classroom — and where earlier this month a tattoed English teacher was accused of seducing a student.

Salo’s classmate Charles Coleman laughingly said he was a bit miffed his buddy was holding out on him.

“I can’t believe he didn’t tell me,” said Coleman, 17. “This is the first time I’m hearing about it. I need to call him up for a loan.”

Kidding aside, Coleman said “it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

Another senior, Anthony Drew, 17, said a grand a week in New York City isn’t all that much, “but better to win when you’re 18 than when you’re 95.”

Salo appears to be the youngest person to win the Lottery’s grand a week for life contest. In May, 21-year-old Pedro Pablo Martinez Jr. won the prize.

With Matthew Lysiak

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Chief of Joan & David Apparel Brand, Dies at 94

D. Gorton/The New York Times

David and Joan Helpern in 1978.

David M. Helpern, the business side of the husband-and-wife apparel design team known as Joan & David, who popularized elegant, comfortable — and non-high-heeled — shoes for working women in the 1960s before expanding their line internationally to include clothing, died on May 14 in Westwood, Calif. He was 94.

The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, Joan Helpern said.

Mr. Helpern, the chief executive of the business, and his wife, the designer and creative director, built their company into a retail preserve of high-quality, moderately priced stylishness beginning in 1967, when Mrs. Helpern designed her first pair of Oxford flats in classic navy blue and white.

“We had noticed that women were running through airports,” Mrs. Helpern said in an interview on Thursday. “We decided to make shoes for women who run through airports.”

The couple brought disparate backgrounds to the project. She was a child psychologist for the New York City schools with a yen for style. He was the scion of a family clothing business — his father had helped found the Boston-based Touraine women’s apparel stores — who much preferred travel and history, which he had studied at Harvard.

Drawing on their travels together, as well as his retail background and her instinct about the limited appeal of high heels in a post-Betty Friedan world, the Helperns found a small factory in Italy willing to produce her Oxfords. The shoes sold well in the United States; she went on to design many other shoes, and by 1990 the Joan & David label appeared in men’s and women’s apparel of all kinds sold in more than 100 outlets in the United States and Europe, including Ann Taylor, Neiman Marcus and the Helperns’ own Joan & David boutiques.

“Disappointment has a good side,” Mr. Helpern told The Boston Globe in 1989, referring to the discontent he once felt working in his father’s business. “It can create a challenge. Nobody who has succeeded is a stranger to failure.”

The Helperns sold their company and the rights to the Joan & David label in 2000 after a series of business reversals.

David Moses Helpern was born in Brookline, Mass., on Nov. 17, 1917, the middle of five children of Rose and Myron Helpern. The elder Mr. Helpern and a brother founded the first Touraine’s women’s store in the 1920s. The company, which expanded to 17 stores, was sold in 1970.

David Helpern graduated from Harvard in 1938. In 1960 he was a widower with a young son when he married Joan Marshall. Besides his wife, he is survived by the son, David Jr., and a daughter from his second marriage, Elizabeth Helpern Lass. David and Joan Helpern legally separated in 1998.

“I was told women were married to high heels,” Mr. Helpern said in 1989. “I was told that soft, unstructured, lightweight shoes wouldn’t sell. People laughed. Especially the New England shoe manufacturers, who told me I’d be skinned alive.”

He added: “We’ve simplified dressing. That’s the American idea.”

A version of this article appeared in print on June 10, 2012, on page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: David M. Helpern Dies at 94; He Led Joan & David.

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Landlord Phillip Goldfarb lives in a nice suburban home while his buildings have many violations

Tenants Association member Judith Mosely, Carmen Parrilla and George Moton (l. to r.) with one of the faulty elevators in their apartment building at 939 Woodycrest Ave. in the Bronx. The property is owned and managed by Phillip Goldfarb.

THE KING OF the Goldfarb real estate empire lives in a 3,400-square-foot mansion on a leafy suburban cul-de-sac, miles from the Bronx apartment building he owns where fire escapes were removed and tenants last week found themselves homeless.

Phillip Goldfarb occasionally jets off to his luxury beachfront condo in Hollywood, Fla., but he also spends much of his time answering hundreds of code violations that his buildings rack up in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.

Goldfarb caught the city’s attention last week when he sought to close out several such violations at 2400 Webb Ave., in the Bronx. Instead, Housing Preservation & Development inspectors who showed up discovered all the fire escapes had been removed from the building.

HPD slapped Goldfarb with even more violations and the city ordered all 200 tenants out of their apartments until the problem is solved.

But long before the fire escape debacle, Goldfarb’s 14 city buildings were already catching flak from agencies that are supposed to keep housing in the city safe.

In the last decade, these buildings have amassed 307 building code violations. They currently have 226 open housing code violations as well.

In one Goldfarb building on E. 80th St., a caller complained to the city in March that entry to the lobby from the rear stairwells had been sealed off, effectively eliminating a second exit as required by law.

Yvette Lanneaux, an attorney who rents a two-bedroom for $6,600 a month in that building, says a few months back the granite mantel over her fireplace suddenly collapsed onto her 13-year-old son.

“It just fell off and broke into a bunch of pieces,” she said. “His arm was injured. It wasn’t a break, but he had a cast on for a week.”

She says management eventually made repairs, but never said they were sorry or offered compensation. She withheld one month’s rent, and is still furious about the incident.

“I was so appalled that they weren’t even pretending to be apologetic,” she said. “The mantel falls off the wall. Smoke alarms don’t work. They just let the building go.”

Last fall, dozens of tenants at 1700 Grand Concourse complained to City Councilman Fernando Cabrera that Goldfarb Properties was harassing them in a bid to force them out.

At that same building, tenant Douglas Weiss was jolted awake at 2 a.m. when a chunk of ceiling concrete fell and smacked him in the face. He sued and won an unspecified settlement in 2009.

NORMAN Y. LONO FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Phillip Goldfarb lives in this large house in Westchester County, while his tenants have to deal with problems in his buildings.

“He had complained about the ceiling ahead of time and nothing was done,” said his lawyer, Eitan Ogen.

Records show tenants in several other Goldfarb buildings have complained about harassment, with construction work performed at odd hours (such as 7 a.m. Saturday) and without proper permits.

At 939 Woodycrest Ave., tenant association member Judith Mosely says since 2010 residents have been hit with surcharges after Goldfarb claimed to have repaired constantly useless elevators.

“Now the elevators still cut out,” she said. “We had an elderly woman stuck in between floors. We had to call the fire department to get her out last fall.”

Phillip Goldfarb has ignored repeated requests for comment from The News about the fire escape screwup and his other buildings.

Last week, Goldfarb roared past a News reporter in his Mercedes, scurrying back into the four-bedroom Westchester manse — with swimming pool — he bought for $900,000 in 2003.

That home is a world away from the building he owns in the Bronx that thrust him into the headlines this week.

At the Webb Ave. building, the city found that Goldfarb had hired an engineer whose license had once been suspended after he pleaded guilty to criminal charges in a bid rigging scheme.

In April, engineer Roland Draper self-certified the plan to remove the fire escapes and the city marked it as approved, although a permit for the job was not yet awarded.

The state suspended Draper’s engineering license in 2005 for one month and put him on probation for two years. Though

most of Draper’s work is in the city, the state did not inform the city Buildings Department about Draper’s troubles, officials said.

Buildings officials are now investigating the cause of the fire escape incident. Meanwhile,

displaced tenants have not been told how long they’ll be forced to live elsewhere.

They’ve scattered to the wind, staying with friends, family and in lonely hotel rooms until their lives are returned.

Mike Staton, a 46-year-old MTA conductor who spent his first two nights at a hotel, is staying at a studio for another six days, and then he’s not sure where’s going.

“We have no idea in terms of when we can go back in,” he said. “It puts my life in an uproar. We’re living out of a suitcase.”

gsmith@nydailynews.com

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