Police & Courts

A man wearing a ski mask, dark-colored jacket, white sweater with a dark stripe, and dark pants robbed an East Hampton store on Wednesday at about 5 p.m., town police have reported.

Multiple people at Main Beach reported seeing two flares go up over the water last Thursday afternoon, followed by airplanes flying over. An officer used binoculars to investigate, but could find nothing suspicious.

A 20-year-old from Springs was lucky to avoid injury, East Hampton Town police said, following an early-morning accident on Jan. 8 in which she was charged with driving while intoxicated.

When a man with a gun took a rabbi and three members of his congregation as hostages at the Beth Israel Congregation in Colleyville, Texas, on Saturday — a situation that the hostages survived, but the gunman did not — ripples of resolve ran through Jewish houses of worship here.

East Hampton Town police charged a registered sex offender last week with failing to notify the authorities of a change in his address within 10 days of moving, as is required by state law.

Last week’s storm didn’t leave large piles of snow, but it was still enough to cause a couple of accidents on local roads.

A woman called police Sunday morning to report seeing, by the side of Stephen Hand’s Path near Cedar Street, a large black garbage bag containing what looked to be “a person, or human remains.” A potentially gruesome situation turned out to be rather routine.

A Harbor View Avenue resident woke up on Sunday to find someone had thrown eggs at his house overnight, though nothing was seriously damaged. He called the police, who, in their written report, attributed the incident to “incorrigible youth.”

A handful of recent crashes on East Hampton Town roads resulted in minor injuries to a few of the drivers.

On behalf of his client, the driver in a hit-and-run incident in August that led to the death of Devesh Samtani, a Hong Kong teenager who was vacationing here, the lawyer Edward Burke Jr. offered sorrowful condolences Wednesday to the Samtani family outside Suffolk County Supreme Court in Riverside.

An East Hampton Town man was charged with driving while intoxicated following a crash Sunday morning in which the Fire Department had to bring in heavy-rescue equipment to pull an injured woman from her car.

Shoe Inn on Newtown Lane reported a shoplifter last Thursday morning. A woman who was first seen trying on a $159 pair of sandals then left the store wearing them, leaving her own shoes behind in the sandals box. She got into a dark-gray Kia, employees told the police, which made an illegal U-turn and headed toward Main Street. All of it was captured on security footage, which is now in police possession.

Among numerous reports of road accidents involving encounters with deer this week, one resulted in injuries to a motorist.

Among other police news this week, after a whole year went by in which no one came to Sag Harbor police headquarters to claim them, two leaf blowers now belong to the 53-year-old Sag Harbor woman who found them and turned them in.

After a 77-year-old woman was injured in a two-vehicle collision last Thursday evening, East Hampton Town police charged the driver of the other vehicle with two counts of driving while intoxicated and one count of leaving the scene of an accident with injuries.

A New York City woman staying at a house in Montauk thought she saw a prowler on the property while walking her dog at around 1 a.m. on Saturday. The only thing an officer noticed was fresh deer tracks in the yard.

On Friday, after receiving a complaint that a man had sexually abused a young girl multiple times over a 10-month time period, East Hampton Town police charged a 49-year-old from Bridgehampton with a felony count of sexual conduct with a child under 13.

In a case that started in August 2020 with two felony charges following an alleged road-rage fight in East Hampton Village, which left a Springs teenager with severe brain injuries, Charles Streep left the East Hampton Town Justice Court Wednesday having accepted a plea deal: guilty of disorderly conduct for obstructing vehicular or pedestrian traffic.

An 80-year-old man was hit by a car as he was walking across Springs-Fireplace Road near Copeces Lane in Springs at around 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 6.

An Amagansett woman was charged on the morning of Dec. 1 with drunken driving after an East Hampton Town police officer reportedly saw her car strike a bush and a business sign in the parking lot of People’s United Bank.

Along with his wife, a television news anchor recently fired from his job at CNN told police last Thursday that their children have been seeing photographers lurking about. According to the police report, “the paparazzi wait down by the beach parking lot for them to leave, and when they are out in public the paparazzi tries to get a reaction out of them to get on camera.”

Fire district elections are to be held Tuesday in a number of communities across the South Fork, at least one of which, Montauk, will have a contested race. The candidates running for a seat on the board of commissioners are Joseph Dryer and Charles “Chip” McLean. Voting will take place at the Montauk Firehouse from 2 to 9 p.m.; masks are required.

It took firefighters about an hour to extinguish a fire in a small barn at the Applewild Farm on Meadow Court in Bridgehampton on Wednesday.

East Hampton Village will soon replace its old mobile police command unit — a retrofitted delivery truck — with a brand-new, more sophisticated one that will cost $695,000.

Reports of all sorts of scams, which are popping up in local police records with what appears to be more and more frequency, should serve as cautionary tales to all. Is the supposed representative of the utility company asking for payment in gift cards? Did the caller request bank account information? “People have to be vigilant," police say.

A 31-year-old Hampton Bays man is facing charges after alleged sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl at the mobile home park on Oakview Highway in East Hampton.

Edinson Jasmany Loja-Calle is charged with two counts of third-degree sex abuse and two counts of acting in a manner injurious to a child under 17, all misdemeanors. East Hampton Town police say that on Sept. 4 and Sept. 17, Mr. Loja-Calle touched the girl’s breasts under her clothes. New York State law says that children under age 17 are not capable of consent.

On Nov. 22, the 61st day of autumn, a Georgica Road resident called police, as well as the Public Works Department, to report leaves in the roadway.

In two crashes on town roads this week, three people were injured. Two of them were taken by ambulance to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

Amos Goodman, a former chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, was sentenced on Nov. 22 to 45 days in jail, stemming from campaign issues in 2018 in which he was accused of forging signatures on nominating petitions.

​​​​​​​A Marine Boulevard resident reported on Nov. 17 that someone had cut down a pine tree at the end of her driveway, leaving just a stump. She told police she suspects that someone wanted it for a Christmas tree "because it was healthy and shaped in such a way."