Police & Courts

After receiving a congratulatory call on the afternoon of July 27, an East Hampton woman thought she had won $25 million in a Publisher’s Clearing House giveaway. All she had to do to collect, said the caller, was to wire $850 to an undisclosed Chase Bank branch. She contacted police last Thursday after realizing she’d been scammed.

On Aug. 4, without naming the individual, East Hampton Village posted a press release announcing the 30-day suspension of a volunteer emergency medical services worker from the Village Ambulance Association after “hostile work environment” complaints filed against him were “found to be valid.” While the village may not have named him, by that point Randy Hoffman, the longtime critical-care E.M.T. who was told of his suspension the day before, had already named himself, sharing his side of the story and expressing his frustration with the decision.

Jay Rowe of Springs was sentenced to up to 12 years in state prison Thursday for the March 2021 kidnapping and robbery of a woman in Springs, an incident that began in the school parking lot around dismissal time.

Half a dozen drunken-driving charges were lodged this week, including for two incidents that happened on Napeague.

A woman pulled a 2018 Subaru into the North Main Street I.G.A. lot on Aug. 2 and suddenly realized she was in the wrong vehicle. It was identical to her own Subaru, parked someplace else.

Following a July 31 incident at the town-owned 140 Springs-Fireplace Road apartments, one man was charged with third-degree misdemeanor assault.

Just because there is flat water doesn’t mean lifeguards can relax. It was a green-flag day up at Maidstone Park last Thursday when lifeguards needed to call in a Jet Ski for assistance for a father and son who were swimming in the calm waters but got too close to the jetty on an incoming tide, according to John Ryan Jr., chief of the East Hampton Town’s lifeguards.

A 21-year-old on a bicycle was struck by a Mercedes-Benz in East Hampton, but had only minor injuries.

The house at 3 Spring Lane in Noyac where two young women died in an early-morning fire on Aug. 3 lacked the permit required under Southampton Town code for property owners who rent out their houses, the town confirmed this week. "There will be charges filed against the homeowners," an assistant town attorney said.

Southampton Town police officers, detectives, and bay constables along with the Suffolk County medical examiner are responding to an unidentified beach in the vicinity of Bay Point in Noyac, where a body has washed ashore.

Daniel Campbell of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., and Montauk pleaded guilty in Suffolk County Criminal Court on Friday to a single felony count of leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. Last August, Mr. Campbell was driving the S.U.V. that struck a Hong Kong teenager, Devesh Samtani.

Two accidents on East Hampton Town roads this week resulted in injuries.

Aiste Lukoseviciute of Montauk, 21, was sitting in the dunes at Kirk Beach Park on July 17 around 7 p.m. when a shot went off and hit her in the back of the head. East Hampton Town police found her bleeding heavily as a result of the shooting, which she initially thought had been a firework of some sort thrown in her direction.

Three people were charged with drunken driving on local roads within the last two weeks.

On July 26, a woman who was said to be "tying plastic bags to village benches" left a "garbage-filled shopping cart" on a Gingerbread Lane sidewalk. Police canvassed the area but could not find her.

Dramatic rescues may grab the most attention, but lifeguards in East Hampton Town and Village save more swimmers each week than the average beachgoer might realize.

A mini-sweep of underage alcohol sales at Montauk establishments on Saturday yielded misdemeanor charges for employees of two popular downtown watering holes.

Jay Rowe of Springs, convicted in March of armed robbery, grand larceny, and kidnapping, turned himself in to officials at Suffolk Criminal Court in Riverside on Monday. According to East Hampton Town Police Capt. Chris Anderson, Mr. Rowe had failed to show up at his July 27 sentencing hearing.

It has been nearly a year since the hit-and-run accident that caused the death of a Hong Kong teenager on a dark road in Amagansett, and the man behind the wheel could learn his fate as soon as Friday in Suffolk County Criminal Court.

Two sisters from Potomac, Md., visiting here with their family, died early Wedneday morning in a house fire on Spring Lane, off Noyac Road in Noyac. Lt. Susan Ralph of the Southampton Town police said the other members of the family were able to escape from the rented house. The son leapt from a second-floor window, she said.

A man and a woman, and a group of their friends, told police they’d been thrown out of the bar at the Memory Motel for no good reason. Witnesses, however, told the officers they’d taken videos of the incident, which police said showed the woman fighting with a bouncer after he tried to eject her intoxicated male friend.

Town police on Sunday arrested a Queens Village woman who they allege is responsible for the disappearance of 23 dozen eggs from the outdoor Iacono Farm stand on Long Lane.

Zane Kitburi had only lived in Montauk for about a month, trading his longtime bartending position at Indochine, a popular Vietnamese restaurant in New York City, for jobs at the Surf Lodge and Roberta’s.

Several recent accidents on local roads involved young drivers.

Tinder-dry conditions and spiking temperatures were only two of the challenges firefighters faced as they worked to extinguish a brushfire that burned some 20 to 25 acres of grasslands in Hither Hills State Park on Friday night and then rekindled on Saturday. Equally challenging was the fire’s difficult-to-reach location between Goff Point and the Walking Dunes, more than a mile from any paved road.

Randall Crater "saw the burgeoning popularity of crypto as a chance to get rich quick through an unscrupulous fraud scheme cloaked by flashy marketing tactics and outright lies," a federal prosecutor said Thursday in announcing Mr. Crater's conviction on charges of wire fraud and other illegal monetary transactions. His trial was held in U.S. District Court in Boston.

Update: A difficult-to-reach brushfire in state parkland between the Walking Dunes and Goff Point at the western edge of Hither Woods burned 20 to 25 acres of grassland Friday night, according to Montauk Fire Chief Scott Snow. At 1:25 p.m. Saturday, East Hampton emergency dispatch confirmed that the fire had reignited.

Sag Harbor police charged a woman with four drug-related misdemeanors after she was allegedly caught shoplifting at Love Shack Fancy, a Main Street shop, on the afternoon of July 11.

A photographer told police Saturday afternoon that he was being harassed by someone who also worked as a paparazzo. He felt “threatened and scared,” he said, claiming that the man was following his car to events to take his own photos. The accused man told police he was just another paparazzo doing his job.

High summer, with its attendant apocalyptic traffic and legion of flustered motorists, hit its stride this week as numerous vehicular accidents were logged by police. Victims included a tree, a deer, a utility pole, and a shopping cart.