Senior pranks gone too far at East Hampton High School have resulted in about 50 students losing the privilege of attending their senior banquet on June 24, school officials said this week.

According to a letter posted yesterday by Richard Burns, the district superintendent, “the most serious transgression was that some seniors entered a building without permission through a locked door. Damage to school property was at a minimum.”

Also according to the letter, senior prank day “always occurred with adult supervision,” but that was not the case this year. Mr. Burns later said by phone that the district is reviewing its tradition of allowing a supervised senior prank.

As rumors of various acts of vandalism and mischief swirled, school officials initially would not confirm or deny any of them, although Mr. Burns did say last week that no animals had been harmed. Yesterday, he debunked some of the rumors: A fake giraffe had not been thrown onto the school’s roof, an old trophy wasn’t destroyed but merely moved, and small holes drilled in the school’s roof did not invalidate the warranty on the work done there.

“Most of what happened were things being moved around, like desks from the cafeteria put out on the lawn,” Mr. Burns said yesterday. “There was Pam sprayed on the lockers. It was just a matter of cleaning.”

“There’s a certain relationship between the building’s administration and the students,” he continued. “When I said how disheartening it was to them, it was because they just go so above and beyond with everything. This is a very special place, and the students broke that trust.”

In an email to parents on Tuesday, Adam Fine, the high school principal, said students were “well aware” that the pranks “went beyond acceptable student behavior.”

“At this point, all of the students who participated in that incident have been addressed, and appropriate consequences have been assigned,” Mr. Fine said. “It is very clear to the high school administration that none of these students intended do harm to our school. By no means should this incident define the class of 2016. It is now time for us to move forward.”

Calls for police assistance over the Memorial Day weekend were up from last year’s, although Chief Michael Sarlo of the East Hampton Town Police Department said the overall tenor and tone in the streets was calmer.

This year, there were 401 calls listed in the police event log between 8 a.m. Friday, May 27, and 8 a.m. Tuesday, May 31. During the same holiday window last year, May 22 to May 26, there were 360 such calls. The number of noise complaints in residential neighborhoods was 35, about twice what it was in 2015, accounting for at least some of the increase.

The leading residential offender, judging by the call log, was in Amagansett, at 68 Fresh Pond Road, where police were sent three times over the weekend, with a fourth visit on the same street listed as 70 Fresh Pond Road.

Noise complaints against businesses, in contrast, dropped significantly this year. There were only three of them in the entire town over the holiday weekend, according to the log, with two of the three, against Sole East in Montauk, coming on Saturday afternoon.

Many of the bars that were once hot spots for code enforcement have changed management teams, among them Sloppy Tuna in downtown Montauk; Harbor, a nightclub in the dock area that has been converted into a restaurant called Gray Lady, and Ciao by the Beach, now called Arbor, located by the Montauk railroad station. Jeff Capri, the general manager of Sloppy Tuna, said Saturday that the bar is now closing earlier, at about 1:30 or 2 a.m. In the past, it shut down at 3 or later, after which patrons would stream over to the Memory Motel or the Point on Main Street. Last year, police responded to several noise complaints concerning Sloppy Tuna; there were none last weekend.

The bar-hopping scene in downtown Montauk appeared quieter as well. “It was a calmer atmosphere,” Chief Sarlo said. He himself spent a good amount of time in the easternmost hamlet over the three days and said that the bar-hoppers were “not hooting and hollering, just going to the next place.”

The chief believes that bars are keeping a careful watch now on their patrons. “They feel the weight of needing to bear responsibility themselves, not allowing over-capacity or serving someone too much,” he said. He singled out the Point, where, he said, management is making sure that customers causing problems are not let back in.

This can sometimes lead to arrests outside the bar. Such was the case, police said, with Shane A. McGovern, 24, of Huntington, who had been ejected from the Point. After police told him he was “not allowed into the establishment,” he reportedly tried to get back in past an officer, and spit on him. Police said he then refused to be handcuffed, leading to a charge of resisting arrest, a misdemeanor, as well as harassment and disorderly conduct, violations.

Townwide, arrests were up slightly this year, from 19 in 2015 to 21, but that number is skewed by the fact that 5 of the 21 involved warrants. Arrests on drunken driving charges were down this year, to five, from nine last year.

One concern, said Chief Sarlo, was a sharp rise in the number of vehicular accidents across the town. He said there were some 27 this year, as opposed to 15 in 2014.

Going forward, the chief said, an important concern is the taxi industry. He said there are simply too many cars, companies, and drivers flooding the town, particularly in Montauk. Most of the drivers are hard-working people trying to make a living, he said, “although there are one or two bad apples out there.” In the big picture, however, the pressure to make money, to book that extra fare or two, has some drivers making illegal U-turns or stopping in the middle of the road to discharge or pick up passengers.

Officers will be cracking down on cabbies who park their vehicles, particularly in places designated as taxi stands, and then walk into crowds outside hot night spots, fishing for high-paying fares. The chief said the department intends to obtain contact information from the town clerk’s office and then set up meetings with owners of the many companies operating here this summer, to help bring their drivers into compliance.

Emergency medical personnel, meanwhile, had a busy weekend, responding to 57 calls between Friday and Monday, according to East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen, who oversees the dispatching for the five agencies. The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, which answers calls in the village, Northwest Woods, and areas of Wainscott, answered 21 calls, 12 on Sunday alone. The Montauk Fire Department answered the second most number of E.M.S. calls with 18, 9 of them Sunday.

All in all, Chief Sarlo said, it was a good start to the season. “It’s summer. It’s the beach. There’s going to be a party,” he said, but added, “We’re headed in the right direction.”

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Correction: An earlier version of this story that appeared online and in print incorrectly stated the name of the business that received noise complaints over the weekend. It was not Ruschmeyer's but Sole East.

In a dispute with Sandpebble Builders that dates back to 2006, the East Hampton School District has spent more than $3 million in legal fees, but with a New York State Supreme Court decision last week, the costly dispute appears to finally be nearing its end.

Last Thursday, a jury concluded that the school district should pay Sandpebble Builders about $750,750. The company, which had originally been hired to manage the multimillion-dollar renovation of all three district buildings, had been seeking damages of $3.7 million plus accrued interest in a sued alleging that East Hampton had wrongfully terminated its contract.

Sandpebble sued after the school administration signed a new contract with a different construction company when the scope of the work increased dramatically. The district eventually countered with a lawsuit of its own to limit the damages that Sandpebble could collect. After many years of delays, jury selection began on May 9; the trial began the following day.

Mr. Burns announced the outcome in press release on Friday. He later said by email East Hampton does not plan to appeal the decision and that there is sufficient money available as encumbered funds in the school’s budget to pay Sandpebble the sum that the jury determined the district owes. The district may also have to pay accrued interest, the amount of which will be determined in a conference with Justice Jerry Garguilo “to discuss the details of the decision by the jury,” Mr. Burns said.

Isabel Madison, the district’s assistant superintendent for business, said in an email yesterday that East Hampton has paid about $3.12 million to its attorneys since the Southampton construction company sued in 2006. East Hampton is represented by Steven G. Pinks of the Hauppauge firm Pinks, Arbeit & Nemeth, which it hired in 2011 to replace a previous law firm.

Before yesterday’s figure, Richard Burns, East Hampton’s superintendent, said in January that legal fees had approached $2.8 million.

Investigators are trying to determine what caused a masonry worker to fall to his death at an oceanfront construction site in East Hampton Village Tuesday morning, and whether anything could have been done to avoid the fatal accident.

Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen said Vitor Nobre, a 55-year-old Ronkonkoma business owner, fell about 12 feet onto concrete while he was working at 62 Further Lane, where, according to village records, Barry Rosenstein, a hedge fund manager, has begun building a 16,407-square-foot house with a 2,305-square-foot guest house. Number 62 was part of a record three-lot, $147 million sale that made headlines two years ago as the highest price ever paid in the United States for a residential property.

Mr. Nobre “was so good at what he did. He was so cautious,” his son, Tiago Nobre, 32, said by phone yesterday afternoon. His father, a Portuguese immigrant and a mason for more than three decades, had co-owned N-D Masonry with a friend for 16 years. He often worked on the South Fork. “He’s been working on that his whole life. He was one of the best,” his son said. “I don’t know if there wasn’t too much safety there. We have to find all this out.”

According to police, Mr. Nobre and another man were standing on the second floor, a solid concrete floor, laying down cinder block to create a wall on the edge of the open building. He was working with rebar, steel used as a tension device in reinforced concrete, Chief Larsen said. “Apparently, from what we can figure, he was trying to do something with the rebar and it snapped off. Maybe his momentum carried him off the roof.”

“Nobody actually saw him fall,” the chief said. The other man was on the opposite side, doing the same work, and did not realize Mr. Nobre had fallen until others below yelled that there had been an accident. The chief said there were about 65 construction workers employed at the 18-acre property at the time.

Mr. Nobre’s son said his father’s workers tried to help him right away, “but it was too late.” Police received a 911 call at 8:43 a.m.

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association called for the Suffolk Police medevac helicopter to transport the man to Stony Brook University Hospital, the nearest level-one trauma center, but it was unable to fly due to the foggy weather. He was taken to Southampton Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. 

His father’s partner broke the news to Tiago Nobre, who said his family was distraught. In addition to his son, Mr. Nobre is survived by a 28-year-old daughter, Carla LaPuglia; his wife of 30 years, Gina, and two grandsons, ages 2 years and 8 months.

Mr. Nobre left Portugal in 1981 for a better life in America, and settled in Ronkonkoma, near a small Portuguese community in Farmingville. “He was a great man. Adored by many. Never had any problems with anybody. Everybody liked him,” his son said. He described his father as an “old-school European,” a hard worker who loved what he did and taught his son, who worked by his side for 10 years before striking out on his own, the business.

“It is awful. The victim is only 55 years old,” Chief Larsen said. Construction-site accidents and falls do happen often, he said, but they usually result in a broken bone or two.

Detective Steven Sheades said Mr. Nobre fell onto his head, suffering major trauma. “We have 12-foot falls all the time. The fall was not out of the ordinary. The fact that he landed on his head on the concrete is what did it.”

Detectives are trying to locate surveillance footage. “There are cameras. We’re not really sure if they would have captured it. We’re not sure which way the lens was facing,” the chief said. “So far there’s been nothing to point to any criminality. We’re still investigating. We still want to look at the video. We still want to talk to anyone who might have seen it. But it looks like it was a terrible accident.”

At the request of the homeowner, Mr. Rosenstein, the general contractor, identified by police as Bulgin & Associates, a high-end firm in Southampton, shut down construction after the accident Tuesday and yesterday, Detective Sheades said. A call to the firm was not immediately returned.

The project has a valid building permit, which was issued about a year ago, said J. Kent Howie, the village’s senior building inspector. There have been no violations at the site, he said, and the contractor was found to be up to date on all inspections. 

In addition to the local police investigation, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency that investigates when a worker is injured or killed, has been called in. Mr. Nobre was not wearing any safety device. Village police were not aware that one might be required.

Visiting hours will be held tomorrow at the McManus-Lorey Funeral Home, 2084 Horseblock Road in Medford, from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Funeral services will be held there on Saturday at 10 a.m., followed by burial at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram.

Update, 3:18 p.m.: East Hampton Village police released the name of the construction worker who died Tuesday morning. He was Vitor Nobre. Mr. Nobre, 55, of Ronkonkoma, died at Southampton Hospital from his injuries. 

Original, 11:26 a.m.: A construction worker died Tuesday morning following a fall of about 12 feet at an East Hampton Village property that made headlines two years ago for its record $147 million sale. 

East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen said the 55-year-old mason from Ronkonkoma lost his footing while working at 62 Further Lane at 8:43 a.m. The man fell about 12 feet onto a concrete floor, the chief said. 

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association responded and called for the Suffolk County medevac to transport the man to Stony Brook University Hospital, the nearest level-one trauma center. However, due to the weather, the helicopter was unable to fly. He was taken by ambulance to Southampton Hospital, which recently became a level-three trauma center, where he was later pronounced dead. His name is being withheld until his family has been notified. 

Village police detectives are investigating. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Village Building Department were also called in to investigate. 

The property is owned by Barry Rosenstein, a hedge fund manager, who bought the three-parcel ocean-view spread in 2014. 

A driver from New Jersey who was making a left turn from Buell Lane onto Main Street in East Hampton Village was ticketed by police after allegedly causing a three-car accident Wednesday afternoon.

According to Officer Chris Jack of the village police, the driver of a 2006 BMW X5, whose name was not released, failed to yield to oncoming traffic and struck a 2016 Jeep Cherokee that was traveling east on Main Street. That vehicle was then pushed into the westbound lane, striking a 2008 Jeep Wrangler.

The driver of the Jeep Wrangler, a woman whose name was also not released, complained of whiplash and was taken by ambulance to Southampton Hospital. Officer Jack said no other injuries were reported.

The accident occurred at approximately 12:40 p.m. All three vehicles were towed from the scene a short time later.

On Wednesday an odd couple, mother and near neonate, sadly washed up on the Shagwong beach west of Montauk Point near the opening to Oyster Pond. No unidentifiable Montauk Monster this time, but rather two very identifiable pygmy sperm whales as per Victoria Bustamante’s photographs. Both were bloodied and, apparently, both had already been host to several turkey vultures hanging around that area.

Vicki, her son Chris and his girlfriend, Rachel, and friend Fabian had heard about one of the two whales and when they went to the beach to look, a little more than a stone’s throw from the Bustamante house there were two, cow and calf. A very sad scene indeed.

A pygmy sperm whale or its very close cousin, the dwarf sperm whale, washes up on a South Fork beach every 10 years of so. They are nowhere common, but like the osprey, are found throughout the world. They are very seldom seen, as they tend to retreat, skulking just below the surface, part of their backs exposed, or sinking into the depths off the continental sea shelf to escape notice or feed. They are solitary, paired, or travel in small groups, no more than six to a pod, unlike the third specie in the genus, the giant sperm whale, which is bold and aggressive and travels in large pods, the same species upon which the famous American novel “Moby Dick” was based.

These three whales belong to the tooth-whaled group; they have up to 24 teeth in their lower jaw which have a raking or sieving function in feeding. All three of them feed on squid, the big one able to take a giant 300-pound squid in one gulp.

The toothed whales also differ from the baleen whales in that they have only one functioning blowhole for expelling water and breathing in air. Blowholes derive from the nostrils of ancestral land mammals (as the very early hippopotami). Baleen whales have two. The other nostril of in the toothed whales is covered over, and in becoming so, has changed its function. It is used to produce the sounds used in these whales’ very accurate echolocation, sounds that are then amplified by the spermaceti sac and the “melon” of the forehead and emitted in a directional beam of clicks via the functional blowhole. The clicks are in the pitch range of 125 kilohertz, way above the human ear’s detection limit.

The spermaceti is made up of a waxy mixture of oils and greases. When sperm whales were harvested during the whaling years, it was used to make lubricating oils and candles, which were much in demand throughout the world.

The pygmy sperm whale is no match for a big shark or an orca, and so it resorts to another defensive device not found in other whales or porpoises. It stores up gallons of reddish-brown liquid in its intestine and, when threatened, exhales it through its blowhole to confuse a potential predator while it slowly slips away from its grasp. Not only does it feed on squid and octopi, it employs their defensive strategy when it becomes a prey.

The pygmy sperm whale is adept at staying out of trouble and identifying prey and potential enemies using directional sound, and it also has magnetic crystals in its snout, which are believed to be used in homing and directional navigation. The common pigeon is another species that seems able to use the earth’s magnetism to find its way in the dark or over a long course.

The gestation period of the female pygmy sperm whale is about 11 months, and the single young is believed to stay in the care of the mother for more than a year before weaning. Pygmy sperm whales do not take well to captivity, seldom lasting for more than a month or so when put in an aquarium.

Meanwhile, the crew from the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation was on the job autopsying the whales, one of which was to be buried on the Montauk beach. It provided exact measurements, 9.7 and 4.5 feet long, respectively, according to Rachel Bosworth, a spokeswoman for the foundation. It will be interesting to see if the two had plastic in their stomachs, a common finding during such autopsies of cetaceans.

Interestingly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admistration, which is charged with protecting marine mammals in the United States, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and Coast Guard are busy working with several private not-for-profit organizations to protect whales and increase their populations, while other branches of the federal government are trying to open pelagic waters to oil wells, wind turbines, and increased traffic by big ships plying the Atlantic and Pacific. Then, too, there is the Navy, with its constant sonic underwater booming, which is harmful and disorienting not only to whales but also to porpoises, orcas, seals, sea lions, walruses, marine turtles, and fish with swim bladders, of which there are thousands.

Every time such a tragedy besets us, and they are becoming more and more common with each passing year, we have to ask our government, which will it be? Conserve the marine mammals according to the legislative acts on the books, or, conversely, make it more and more difficult for them to carry on their life functions by continuing to allow the oceans to be exploited by industry and profiteers?

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

A 2-year-old boy nearly drowned when he fell off a boat at the Montauk Lake Club and Marina on Wednesday morning, East Hampton Town police said. 

Captain Chris Anderson said Wednesday afternoon that there was limited information, but that the boy, Nathan Sarmiento of East Hampton, had vomited a large amount of water and began breathing on his own before police arrived, and was crying before he was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital. 

Police and emergency medical personnel were called to the marina at 11:13 a.m. Montauk Fire Chief Joe Lenahan was around the corner working when his department received the call about a child who had fallen into the water. He said he got to the marina within 45 seconds of the call. He ran to the pool, found no one, then ran out back to the large lawn overlooking the water and also found no one. "I stopped and listened and I heard a scream in the distance," he said. He ran to the end of the middle dock and found a bunch of people huddled around the boy. 

The boy was laying on his back, was blue, and had labored breathing, the chief said. An older man told him he had gotten the water out of the child, but the chief said he could tell the child was struggling to breathe and he could hear gurgling. The chief took the child in his arms, turned him onto his stomach, and, he said, "ran as fast as I could" down the dock to meet the police and ambulance crew as they arrived. The child threw up more water as he carried him. Once with an officer, he took the child's soaking wet clothes off — a brown shirt with a teddy bear on it and blue pants, he said --  and then the on-duty paramedic arrived. 

Chief Lenahan said he wasn't able to learn from the boy's mother, a Spanish-speaking woman, Irma Suarez, what exactly had happened. Someone on the dock said the boy had been in the water for 15 minutes, but that could not be verified. 

The paramedic reported to the chief that the child was alert as they loaded him onto a helicopter at East Hampton Airport to be taken to Stony Brook University Hospital

"Hopefully the good Lord is going to pull him through," Chief Lenahan said. 

Residents and visitors to the South Fork can learn how to bid farewell to the internal combustion engine and reduce their carbon footprint without leaving East Hampton, thanks to the opening on Friday of a Tesla Motors location on Newtown Lane. 

The California manufacturer of electric cars, one of several new businesses to set up shop in the commercial district this spring, offered a close-up inspection and test drive of a fully loaded iteration of its Model S sedan and the newer Model X sport utility vehicle. 

Those interested in Tesla Motors and electric driving can learn about both at the East Hampton gallery. The nearest location where orders can be taken is its showroom at the Americana Mall in Manhasset. 

For those accustomed to combustion engine-powered vehicles and, particularly, cars of a certain age, driving the Model S may be akin to piloting a rocket. A leisurely drive up Long Lane in East Hampton last Thursday provided only a hint of the optional Ludicrous acceleration (its actual name) in the Model S, which propels it from zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds. A 17-inch touchscreen in the cabin controls most functions as well as map-based navigation, web browsing, smartphone apps, and multiple features including projected range and energy consumption. 

Unlike spacecraft, however, the Model S is one of the safest vehicles in existence: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration bestowed it a 5-star rating, the agency’s highest, both over all and in its subcategories. Software is updated over the air; unlike other vehicles, says the manufacturer, a Tesla improves over time. 

The Model S P90D (“P” for performance, “90” for its 90-kilowatt battery pack, “D” for dual motor) on display in East Hampton unlocks when the keyholder approaches. The car starts noiselessly, and its side mirrors unfold, when the brake pedal is pressed. While the manufacturer shies from the term “self-driving car,” the automation of many functions is quickly apparent. The optional Autopilot feature matches the car’s speed to traffic conditions and automatically changes lanes when the turn indicator is tapped. The feature also allows the car to park and unpark itself, scan for parking spaces, and alert the driver when one becomes available. 

The Model S P90D has a range of 300 miles. While a recharge from a wall charger at home will take hours, a nationwide network of Superchargers — 3,738 of them, at 628 stations — gives the car a full charge in a maximum of one hour and 10 minutes. Free for Tesla owners, the Superchargers are placed to minimize stops during long-distance travel and are located near shopping centers, restaurants, and Wi-Fi hotspots. The network, along with “destination” charging stations including at the Montauk Yacht Club and c/o the Maidstone in East Hampton, is displayed on the car’s touchscreen. 

A Tesla’s regenerative braking system will take some getting used to: It is activated when the accelerator is released. The process recharges the battery, and actual braking is reduced. 

While electric cars represent a small fraction of those on the road today, the category is growing. Tesla’s Model S starts around $70,000, with the loaded P90D costing $137,000, according to a company representative. But in March, Tesla Motors announced the Model 3, which is scheduled for production next year and will start at $35,000. Within two weeks, almost 400,000 orders had been taken.

Fort Pond House is once again open for use after a three-year renovation and restoration of the house and land. Official opening ceremonies will be held there on Sunday afternoon, beginning at 2.

The four-acre property, which has waterfront access to the pond, is at 128 Shepherd’s Neck Road. It was bought by East Hampton Town in 2003, after which school and community groups used the old house on the site for a variety of classes and other activities. In 2010, however, despite widespread community opposition, the rundown building was shuttered and the property was put up for sale by a majority vote of the town board. The move prompted several lawsuits.

The resolution authorizing the sale was rescinded in August 2013, and restoration began, led by Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc and the town’s property management committee. The site was named Carol Morrison Park, honoring the late Ms. Morrison, a Montauk resident, environmentalist, and land preservation supporter.

In a statement last week, Mr. Van Scoyoc cited the efforts of town staffers as well as donations from private groups and businesses, including Men at Work construction, Warren’s Nursery, Fort Pond Native Plants, and Concerned Citizens of Montauk, in getting the property reopened.

The park, which includes trails and a launching ramp for canoes and kayaks, will be open daily from dawn to dusk. The house can be used by appointment through the East Hampton Town Department of Parks and Recreation.

Four times during any one year, excluding the months of July and August, individuals or groups may rent the entire property, both house and grounds, for their exclusive use. Town board approval must be obtained, and only one such event in any month will be permitted.