College Senior ‘With the World in Front of Her’
An East Hampton couple, both 21 years old, are facing felony charges after being arrested in separate incidents occurring within two days of each other. Both spent the holiday weekend in the county jail.
Justin R. Cruz and Kori R. Fleischman had been living in a rented room at 61 Whooping Hollow Road, Det. Sgt. Greg Schaeffer said Tuesday. On the night of Nov. 22, he said, East Hampton Town police were called to the house to quell a fight. Mr. Cruz had attacked another resident, Alexis Rivera-Narvaez, punching him “in the face several times.” The victim suffered a “fractured left cheek bone and a concussion involving swelling on the brain, vomiting, and dizziness,” according to the report.
The fight began when Mr. Cruz accused his housemate of stealing from him, according to the police. After it ended, they said, Mr. Cruz went to the garage and vandalized a Ford belonging to another resident, Jacqueline Gutierez-Chaves, puncturing its grill and destroying the radiator. “Jacqueline was already outside, fighting with Justin and his girlfriend, Kori Fleischman, about her damaged car,” Mr. Rivera-Narvaez told police. “After they stopped fighting, I went to call the police, and that is when they got in their Nissan and sped off.”
“I punched the kid in his face, but I didn’t do anything to her car,” Mr. Cruz told police when they confronted him the next day after picking him up at a nearby residence. Two days before Thanksgiving, in a nearly empty courtroom presided over by East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana, he was arraigned on a felony charge of criminal mischief, as well as a misdemeanor charge of assault. Seated in the courtroom was Ms. Fleischman.
Mr. Cruz has three cases open on Justice Rana’s calendar, including another criminal mischief charge and a violation of probation. She set bail at $5,250. Ms. Fleischman spoke with him in a hallway as he was being led away.
A couple of hours later, on Oakview Highway near Middle Highway in East Hampton, an officer, aware that Ms. Fleischman’s license had been suspended in August after she pleaded guilty to driving with ability impaired by alcohol, spotted her at the wheel of a 2002 Nissan and pulled her over. The car, which had blankets and belongings in it, was searched.
“A clear plastic bag containing a white powdery substance and a digital scale were located within her vehicle,” police reported. Asked if it was cocaine, she reportedly responded, “It is. It’s coke. That’s the only thing I have knowledge of being in there.”
However, police said, they also found “five glassine envelopes containing a brown powder,” said to be heroin.
The cocaine weighed over a half-ounce, leading to a felony possession charge, as well as a charge of possession with intent to sell, also a felony. She was additionally charged with heroin possession at the misdemeanor level.
Ms. Fleischman, a senior at Rutgers University, had had no trouble with the law until June, when she was charged with drunken driving after crashing a 2004 Volvo, registered in her name to a Scotch Plains, N.J., address. She was scheduled to spend the current semester studying in Valencia, Spain, and her lawyer, Robert J. Coyle of Sag Harbor, managed to obtain for her a reduced charge, something rarely granted by the district attorney’s office in a D.W.I. case that involves a crash. She pleaded guilty to that charge on Aug. 19, and flew to Valencia. She posted a photo of herself on Facebook five days later, sitting in front of a fountain in the Spanish city, smiling.
But a few weeks later she abandoned her studies, returning to East Hampton and Mr. Cruz, who has a history of arrests on minor charges including possession of stolen property.
Mr. Fleischman was arraigned on the cocaine possession charges the day before Thanksgiving. Expressionless, she stood before Justice Rana, who asked for her phone number. When she gave it, Justice Rana asked, “Isn’t that the number Justin gave me yesterday?” It was.
“All of those people who are supposedly your friends, they are not here now. Those people are not your friends,” Justice Rana said. She told Ms. Fleischman to turn around and look at the courtroom. The young woman, in handcuffs, appeared in shock as she turned. “I don’t see any of them here. They are users,” said Justice Rana.
She set bail at $21,000. “The Justin Cruzes of the world are not your friends,” she told the defendant. “You will have a little time in jail to think about it . . . A woman with the world in front of her is going to jail tonight.”
On Monday, no grand jury indictment having been obtained, Ms. Fleischman was brought back to the courthouse. This time, her parents were present, and she looked back over her shoulder at them. Her mother cried.
It was Justice Steven Tekulsky’s turn on the bench. “You’re fortunate that this case has not been presented to a grand jury,” he said. Ms. Fleischman was released later that afternoon, and will enter a drug rehabilitation program, according to her lawyer. Mr. Cruz was still in jail as of yesterday.