Police & Courts

Wayne Sapiane, a guest at Maureen’s Haven on New Year’s Eve, was assaulted two days later and found in downtown Riverhead with a serious head injury. He died Sunday night. 

On New Year’s Day, fighting against imminent darkness and weather, East Hampton Marine Patrol officers rescued two duck hunters stranded in their boat off Louse Point in Springs and holding on to a navigation buoy.

A 68-year-old man was seen in the 7-Eleven parking lot at about 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 28, urinating into a jar.

A Montauk man was arrested there on the evening of Dec. 27 after East Hampton Town police said he had intentionally broken the side-view mirror of a 2018 Range Rover.

A 56-year-old man was charged with driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor, on Dec. 23 after crashing a 1997 Ford van into bushes off Route 27 in Montauk near Ditch Plain Road.

As of Jan. 1, when New York State’s controversial new bail reform laws took effect, 301 inmates in Suffolk County jails had been released. The new laws, which mandate that those charged with misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies be released without bail following arraignment, have triggered anger across the state as people accused of serious crimes walk free.

A 17-year-old girl went to the East Hampton High School resource officer on Dec. 4 to report that she has been receiving harassing messages through her Instagram account since October.

The news stories that captured East Hampton Star readers' attention in 2019 include headlines involving murder, drunken-driving crashes, major drug busts, fires, and a shooting.  

Lisa Rooney of Montauk faces 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison but remains free without bail under New York State’s new bail reform law.

The parents of a 15-year-old were arrested Friday night after East Hampton Village police found teenagers drinking at a house party at 26 The Circle.

A fire Saturday morning in a Water Mill home owned by the publishing heiress Anne Hearst caused major damage to the 17,000-square-foot house, though Ms. Hearst and several family members escaped uninjured. Firefighters were able to rescue two cats and a substantial amount of artwork.    

The Southampton Town fire marshal investigating the cause said that between the size of the residence and the way it had been built, the fire proved difficult to put out, with pockets of flames popping up from behind walls well into the evening.

Rogue embers, still smoldering in a fireplace at an East Hampton house, erupted into flames in the early hours of Sunday morning.

A man arrested in October for allegedly forcing a woman he had just met to perform a sex act on him pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in East Hampton Town Justice Court, but will have to register as a sex offender.

Did someone lose a Christmas card? An envelope with a card inside and a $20 bill was found on Main Street Saturday afternoon and turned in to police. The card thanked “Ricky and the entire North Haven Village staff.” A Sag Harbor Village officer dropped it off at North Haven Village Hall.

Two accused murderers spent Christmas behind bars while their cases remained pending in Suffolk County Criminal Court in Riverhead.

Parks police are investigating a death in Montauk's Camp Hero State Park, believed to be a suicide, on the day before Christmas. 

The owner of Village Hardware in East Hampton was arrested Saturday on a child endangerment charge in an incident that police say happened in the store on Oct. 13.

East Hampton Village police arrested a 23-year-old woman who they said bounced two checks this fall and used an American Express credit card account that did not belong to her to pay for services at the Elegant Touch Nail Spa.     

On one of the coldest days of the year, a fire broke out in a large house in Bridgehampton Thursday afternoon. 

Police were given a piece of litter with a man’s name on it at Main Beach on Friday afternoon. An officer contacted the man, who claimed that garbage must have fallen out accidentally when he opened his car door the night before. He picked up the litter from the officer.

East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky has dismissed two misdemeanor charges against Matthew Hunt, a 21-year-old would-be sailor from Arizona who ran his used sailboat onto a Montauk beach in September just two days after buying it on eBay.     

Former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota and his top chief aide, Christopher McPartland, were found guilty Tuesday on felony charges related to their attempt to cover up the beating of a prisoner by the disgraced Suffolk police chief James Burke in 2012. 

Randy Hoffman, a dedicated volunteer who has responded to a few thousand calls over the course of his 12-year involvement with the emergency medical system on the South Fork, helping countless patients and in some instances literally saving their lives, now finds himself a patient in need.

The owner of Petit Bleu, a children’s store in East Hampton Village, who was cited by code enforcement last month for placing two stuffed golden retrievers, one adorned with a “welcome” sign, at the entrance to her shop, contested the summons in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Monday. 

When a small bird, possibly a yellowtail warbler, was trapped under a Jeep whose driver stopped on Gingerbread Lane just before noon on Dec. 2, an East Hampton Fire Department chief who was driving down the street came to the rescue.

David R. Kent, 39, of East Hampton was arrested on a drug charge on Dec. 4. During a search, East Hampton Town police said, they found a small baggie containing a white powdery substance that later tested positive for cocaine in the center console of his 1985 Chevrolet.

Commissioner elections were held in four fire districts that are in charge of fire and emergency medical services in East Hampton Town on Tuesday, but only one of them — Montauk — had a contested race. There, William Pitts was the winner in a field of three.

Lisa Rooney, who was charged with drunken driving after she struck and killed a bicyclist in Montauk in late October, had a blood-alcohol content of .13 more than three hours after the crash, a toxicology report has shown. The legal limit is .08.

Voters will go to the polls on Tuesday to elect fire district commissioners, whose job it is to oversee tax dollars spent on fire services, emergency medical care, and other duties.