Police & Courts

Suffolk County District Attorney Timothy D. Sini announced Thursday that a drug trafficking ring based in Riverhead -- which investigators say also sold cocaine and other illegal substances in the Hamptons and in Brookhaven Town -- has been busted, landing 12 people in court.

This week, police arrested two drivers who were behind the wheel when they should not have been. Bonnie Rychlak, 69, of East Hampton was charged with both driving while intoxicated and having .08 of 1 percent alcohol or more in her blood on the night of April 11 when she hit and injured a bicyclist on Old Stone Highway near La Foret Lane, police said.

A plane that flew as low as 50 feet above houses and businesses in Sag Harbor last week and prompted numerous 911 calls, may lead to a criminal charge for its pilot, David J. Wisner of East Hampton.

A man was sitting on the train tracks near the East Hampton Railroad Station, a 911 caller reported on Tuesday evening. A responding officer found the man who said he lived in Riverhead standing on a sidewalk. He explained that he had been waiting for a bus and said he would stay off the tracks.

In a three-car evening mix-up on April 14 at Cedar Street and Stephen Hand's Path in East Hampton, an 18-year-old East Hampton driver identified by police as W.A. Minchalabernal was injured after his car hit another vehicle and then struck a tree.

A federal grand jury has indicted two members of Montauk's Gosman family and a commercial fishing boat owner on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and obstructing an investigation in connection with a scheme to sell at least $250,000 in illegally caught fluke and black sea bass. The United States Department of Justice announced the indictment on April 21.

Mitchell Alfus, 69, of Wainscott was arrested and arraigned April 6 on misdemeanor charges of criminal obstruction of breathing and injuring a child less than 17 years old.

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.

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.

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.

"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 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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.