Ill-Fated Meeting in a Holtsville Diner
An artist with a studio on Plank Road, East Hampton, called East Hampton Town police there shortly before midnight on Saturday, leading to the arrest of a Bayport woman on multiple charges including the theft of his debit cards.
According to police, the woman introduced herself as Kayla McKean to Yong Jo Ji when they met last Thursday morning in a diner in Holtsville. “I was on the way to some meetings I had in New York City,” Mr. Ji stated in his signed complaint, and had stopped off for a quick breakfast. “I met a young woman who seemed down on her luck.” She was an orphan, she told him.
He needed someone to photograph his artwork, he said, and offered her the job. Taking her cellphone number, Mr. Ji, whose home is in Manorville, told her he would pick her up on his way back to the East End, and did so, stopping at a Central Islip address.
They drove straight from there to his East Hampton studio, he said, and he gave her a room to sleep in.
The next morning, they began working on his project, Mr. Ji said in his statement, but it quickly became apparent that she did not know how to use a computer. The artist told the woman the arrangement wasn’t working out, and “offered her cab fare or whatever” to take her home. She became distraught, he said, and he decided instead to leave her at a house he knew in East Hampton, which was not otherwise identified.
He did not see her for the next 36 hours, until he walked into his studio late Saturday night. There, he told police, he found her passed out in an armchair with one of his debit cards in her hand. He woke her up and told her he was calling 911. She went into the next room, Mr. Ji said, “and jumped out the bathroom window while I was on the phone with the police.”
He ran into the bathroom and found the medicine cabinet open. Several of his prescription drugs were missing, he stated.
Police found the woman hiding in nearby bushes. Initially, she was charged with felony grand larceny in connection with the debit card. At headquarters in Wainscott, at 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, police searched her bag and found three containers of controlled drugs including Alprazolam; amphetamines, and several small waxed paper bags of heroin, leading to three misdemeanor drug-possession charges. They also found a second debit card of Mr. Ji’s and nine hypodermic needles.
Charged with two felonies and four misdemeanors, the woman was arraigned before East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky. After police identified her by her real name, Kayla A. Murray, Justice Tekulsky asked where she lived. She gave a Bayview Avenue address in Bayport, saying she had lived there her entire life. An online telephone book lists a Kayla McKean at that address.
Justice Tekulsky told her that the district attorney’s office had asked him to set bail at $20,000. “You have a number of misdemeanor convictions, including one conviction for criminal contempt,” he noted.
He set bail at $5,000. “I don’t have that, your honor,” she said. “I don’t have any way to post bail.” She told an officer she felt faint and was given a chair, as Justice Tekulsky read to her details of a stay-away order of protection he was issuing for Mr. Ji.
Ms. Murray, 26, was being held in the county jail as of yesterday morning. She is due to be returned to the courthouse today, where she will meet a lawyer from the Legal Aid Society, Brian Francese. The society provides lawyers on weekdays for indigent defendants, but not on weekends, when the justice court is at its busiest.
If there is no grand jury indictment against her she will be released tomorrow without bail.