Fight over missing boy
GRIEVING FRIENDS and family gathered Friday in the Bronx to say goodbye to the transit worker who fell to his death earlier this month.
As pictures of St. Clair Ziare Richards-Stephens played on a screen near the casket, uniformed members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 marched up the aisle and offered their comrade a final salute.
NYC Transit head Andy Byford also attended the funeral.
Local 100 president Tony Utano shared a few words with the crowd on behalf of Richards-Stephens’ coworkers.
“St. Clair was part of something bigger than all of us. He was a transit worker. And New York City is nothing without its transit workers,” Utano said.
Richards-Stephens had EIGHT YEARS after a Staten Island boy went missing, the legal fight over his disappearance continues.
A Brooklyn federal judge decided Patrick Alford’s father and sister can keep on with their arguments the city was wrong to put the children in foster care when the siblings could’ve been with their dad.
On Jan. 22, 2010, 7-yearold Patrick ran away from the foster home he’d been placed in weeks earlier. He remains missing. While in foster care, court papers said, the boy showed troubling behavior — like other attempts to leave, threatening to cut himself with scissors and hitting his head.
Patrick’s sister, then age 4, was placed in the same foster home. Her father was granted custody of the girl shortly after Patrick vanished, according to court papers.
On Wednesday, Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall said there were real questions on how the city Administration for Children’s Services handled placement issues.
Patrick’s mother, Jennifer Rodriguez, is also suing over her boy’s disappearance in a separate federal case. FOOD INDUSTRY icon Andrew Balducci, owner of the revered Greenwich Village gourmet store that bore his family name, has died of acute leukemia at a Long Island hospital. He was 92.
Balducci passed away on March 22 at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn.
He first worked alongside his dad after returning from World War II to their first outpost, a Village fruit stand dubbed Balducci’s Produce.
Fans of the operation included chef James Beard, a regular customer who praised Balducci’s for the quality and cost of its product.
The business expanded in 1972, relocating to Sixth Ave. and 9th St. in the Village while adding a variety of specialty foods. The store at that location closed its doors in 2003.
Balducci was widely credited with introducing broccoli rabe and prosciutto di parma to the American palate. He imported the vegetable from his childhood home in Corato, Italy, to sell in Manhattan.
The company remains one of the largest importers and distributors of fresh produce and specialty foods in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.
Balducci was born in Brooklyn but raised in Italy after his family moved back when he was 2 months old. He returned to New York with his family in 1939, later serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II and participating in the D-Day invasion.
He was survived by his wife, Nina, his sister Grace Doria, daughters Marta and Andrea, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.