Police & Courts

With warmer weather on the way and the increasing availability of vaccines, more vehicles are out on the roads, and with them come a small but increasing number of alcohol-related arrests.

A Miller Lane resident's receipt on Friday of a phony call purporting to be from the Internal Revenue Service prompted the East Hampton Police Department to advise the community that "the I.R.S. never contacts anyone by phone, so don't give any personal information."

A brush fire steadily crept across 3 acres at the northern edge of the Maidstone Gun Club in Wainscott on Saturday starting around noon. According to East Hampton Fire Department Chief Gerry Turza, a pilot approaching the East Hampton Town Airport called it in, which he said happens every once in a while.

Headed east on Montauk Highway in Amagansett last Thursday, 18-year-old Melissa Fallo of Hampton Bays "turned her attention" to the gas station near Oak Lane, according to a police report, and rear-ended a 2019 Mercedes van that had stopped to turn left into the lane. The driver of the van, 19-year-old Kevin Verdugo-Parraâ was taken to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital by Springs ambulance to be treated for neck pain.

Paulo Molina of East Elmhurst and Amil Soyos-Chamale of Riverhead were both charged with unlicensed operation and will be in East Hampton Justice Court on Wednesday and on Friday, April 16, respectively.

A Muir Boulevard woman who was trying to rent a place on Gann Road nearby lost a large amount of money last month in a scam. It began when a man on Craigslist told her to send $600 for an application.

Carlton Kornegay, 56, of Arverne, in Rockaway, Queens, was stopped in Wainscott traffic last Thursday afternoon on the Montauk Highway by East Gate Road, when, according to East Hampton Town police, a Toyota pickup driven by Casten Mata, 23, of St. Petersburg, Fla., did not stop quickly enough and rear-ended Mr. Kornegay's 1995 Ford.

A New York County Supreme Court judge has denied Charles Streep's motion to dismiss a civil case brought against him by David Peralta following an August altercation between the two men in East Hampton that left the teenage Mr. Peralta with what his attorney describes as life-altering brain injuries. The judge, Barbara Jaffe, granted Mr. Streep's motion to dismiss charges of negligence, and stayed the civil case while the criminal one in Riverhead is underway.

Adrian Pizarro, a 29-year-old from Sag Harbor, was driving a 2002 gold Ford on Saturday night when Sag Harbor Village police caught up with him on Swamp Road near Route 114 for failing to maintain his lane. That proved to be the week's only alcohol-related arrest. Police reported that Mr. Pizarro's unsatisfactory performance on roadside sobriety tests was followed by a night in custody. He appeared in the morning before Justice Lisa R. Rana; it was his first such arrest.

"He ran over them like rag dolls and left them there," the victim's husband, Wilson Murillo, said outside Suffolk County Supreme Court on Thursday, of Mark A. Corrado, who is accused of striking Yuris Murillo Cruz and her two children in a borrowed pickup truck on Jan. 13 and then fleeing the scene of the accident.

A gray Chevrolet in the Apple Bank parking lot appeared suspicious last Thursday afternoon to a woman who called police to say it had been there "for quite some time." A man seated at the wheel refused when she asked him to leave, she said. An officer arrived and spoke to him, and the man stated that "he had an important phone call and this was the only place in the area where he had good service."

Police said a 47-year-old Springs man who turned himself in on Monday had entered a woman's car in a Springs School parking lot on March 8, showed her a handgun, an demanded she drive to nearby Shipyard Lane, where he took her cellphone and $8,000 in cash.

All local governments in New York State were ordered a year ago to adopt a police reform plan by April 1, 2021, a deadline that has now arrived.

Police said Noe Guaman-Nieves intentionally ran his 2012 Mitsubishi into a 2008 Hyundai parked in a driveway in Springs. Then, they said, he "aggressively" backed out, striking two mailboxes — all with his 2-year-old in the backseat.

The Montauk Library, which is currently undergoing a $4 million renovation of its facilities, was the scene last Thursday morning of an ongoing dispute between the general contractor, a Bohemia construction company called the Patriot Organization, and two local subcontractors.

On Friday, almost a year and a half after Lisa Rooney of Montauk was charged with drunken driving in a crash that killed a Montauk bicyclist, 28-year-old John James Usma-Quintero, she pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide in Suffolk Supreme Court, Riverhead.

On Saturday morning, on the back patio of a Lily Pond Lane house, three large garbage bags full of sawdust and polyurethane paint cans spontaneously combusted. The flames were extinguished by the homeowners before firefighters arrived.

East Hampton Village

A Cove Hollow Road resident called police last week to report an unknown vehicle in the driveway. It turned out to be a landscaper, there to do yard work, which the homeowner confirmed was the plan all along.

Along with black ice gone from the roads and more drivers venturing out at night came three recent arrests for driving while intoxicated, the first such in several weeks.

Following an investigation into a March 2 domestic incident at the Accabonac Apartments in East Hampton, a resident there stands charged with felony criminal mischief and two counts of second-degree harassment.

Two pedestrians were taken by ambulance to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital Sunday afternoon following an accident on Main Street in East Hampton.

While an Assembly budget proposal threatens to take some of the teeth out of an executive order requiring police departments across the state to adopt reform plans by April 1, East End departments are moving toward meeting that deadline.

Thomas Ingoglia of Manhasset, 21, was arrested early Sunday morning at the Plaza in Montauk on a felony charge of criminal possession after East Hampton Town police reported finding a hallucinogen in his 2017 Subaru.

"We need a more diverse police force," Sandra Dunn of East Hampton Town's Police Reform and Reinvention Committee told the town board on Tuesday. Just four of 65 officers are Latino, she said, and the department has just one African-American member, a detective. Nine officers are women.

A resident of Devon Road in Beach Hampton saw someone "admiring the particular siding of a residence and taking a photograph of it," and notified police.

The Eastville Community Historical Society in Sag Harbor is reeling over the vandalism of gravestones in the St. David A.M.E. Zion Cemetery on Eastville Avenue. The damage was discovered on Tuesday as members of the society were outdoors on a nice day and happened to stop by for a visit.

On Monday afternoon, just as the Springs School was dismissing students, there was a robbery in the vicinity. East Hampton Town police have reported only that a white man, possibly armed, entered the victim's vehicle and "forcibly" stole money.

The East Hampton Town Police Department has announced that school crossing guard positions are available.

East Hampton Town police flagged down a 2018 Jeep involved minutes before in a minor hit-and-run accident near Hampton Street in Sag Harbor.

It seemed suspicious to find a pickup truck and van parked in her Apaquogue Road driveway, a homeowner told police on Friday. She confronted the drivers, who told her they were at the wrong house and were leaving.