Deja Vu in Amagansett Man’s Arrest
A man who calls Amagansett home but has spent much of his adult life either in county jail or state prison is again behind bars in Riverside following an arrest by East Hampton Town police last Thursday. This time he was charged with a felony for burglary and a misdemeanor for the possession of burglary tools.
William Lagarenne, 54, was arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court by Justice Steven Tekulsky the next day, with his mother and brother seated in the back of the courtroom. Afterward, one of his five brothers, Harry Lagarenne, said, “Our dad was N.Y.P.D. He has two brothers who are retired N.Y.P.D. We are a law-abiding family.”
Unlike his brothers, Mr. Lagarenne has been arrested repeatedly, with multiple convictions. His recent crimes have involved stealing wire, pipes, and gutters and selling them for scrap. He was released from county jail in November, 4 months earlier than his 12-month sentence called for, because of good behavior.
According to the current charges, Mr. Lagarenne entered an abandoned building below the MacKay radio tower in Napeague State Park Thursday afternoon. The tower, off a dirt road that runs from Napeague Meadow Road to the Art Barge, was once part of a network of transmitters for transcontinental marine radio signals. It is now used by New York State police.
In his statement to detectives after his arrest, Mr. Lagarenne admitted that he had cut copper wires out of transformers. But, that wasn’t why he went to the building, he said. The Lagarenne residence is about 3,000 feet away as the crow flies. “I live across the way, and earlier in the day, while looking across the bay, I thought I saw a boogie board of mine that had blown across the ice. I looked into the building and saw that there were some old pieces of wire. I grabbed my saw and wire cutters. I figured it’s not a big deal to cut a couple of pieces.”
A police officer arrived about 20 minutes later and spotted more copper wiring in the back of the truck Mr. Lagarenne had been driving. “I had some wiring and scrap metal that I found on the same property, prior to today,” Mr. Lagarenne said in his statement. “None of that stuff is from houses in the area.”
“I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong,” Mr. Lagarenne reportedly told police last week. “Even as a kid, I used to go over to that property and look around.”
It had been almost exactly a year, to the day, since the last time East Hampton Town police arrested him. In the early morning hours of March 5, 2014, Officer Arthur Scalzo pulled over Mr. Lagarenne’s truck on Further Lane on a traffic stop. The officer discovered the truck was loaded with copper gutters, which, it turned out, Mr. Lagarenne and another man had stripped off a house on Oceanview Lane. He was charged with three felonies at the time: grand larceny, criminal mischief, and possession ofstolen property. However, he pleaded guilty to all three in County Court at the misdemeanor level in exchange for a sentence of one year in jail. Officer Scalzo was named the department’s top officer for 2014, in part for this case.
On Friday, Justice Tekulsky told Mr. Lagarenne, who is being represented by Brian Francese of the Legal Aid Society, that he was not allowed, by law, to set bail for him because of his past felony convictions. Mr. Francese entered a denial to last week’s felony charge and a not-guilty plea for misdemeanor possession of a hacksaw and the wire cutters. It is likely that Mr. Lagarenne will also be charged with violation of probation.
Since his November release, Harry Lagarenne said, his brother has been helpful caring for their mother, who had a recent stroke and an injured arm. But, at the same time, he expressed frustration with William and the penal system. “We have tried intervention. Shouting, screaming,” he said. He also blamed the system’s lack of rehabilitation efforts. “They release him from Riverhead, he has no money. No skills. No job. What do they expect? They should have just kept him in.”