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Do you have a story you think we should tell? Call us at (212) 210-NEWS or email us at nydntips@ nydailynews.com. This is your paper, and we are committed to covering the issues that matter to you. Here are some of our top stories from the past week:
Escape artist: If at first you fail, try, try again. A Rikers inmate made two daring escape attempts last week. Arthur Brown, 37, got onto the roof of the three-story James A. Thomas Center on Sunday morning, just three days after he was caught trying to swim away from the jail complex. Correction officers spotted him and he was lowered to the ground (photo). His first try ended in the Rikers Island Channel when he was apprehended shortly after going into the water.
Second chance: A Queens teen serving time for a 2014 murder is getting a new trial after state appeals court judges learned NYPD detectives might’ve coaxed a false confession out of him. Prakash Churaman was sentenced in 2018 to nine years behind bars for the shooting death of 21year-old Taquane Clark. Churaman, then 15, made incriminating statements to a Queens South detective in the days after his arrest. The youth’s DNA was not found at the scene. “As the evidence of the defendant’s guilt was not overwhelming, the error in precluding the testimony of the defendant’s expert was not harmless,” the judges wrote in their decision.
Phase Two: The city entered Phase Two of reopening on Monday following a months-long coronavirus shutdown. Now restaurants can serve diners outdoors, stylists are cleared to cut hair, workers can return to their offices and shoppers can go back to retail stores, all within certain limits. “I’m very excited that this day has come,” Mayor de Blasio said. “I’m very excited for these folks who have put their whole lives into their restaurants. It’s just so much a part of life of this city, but it’s something that gives me a tremendous amount of joy.” The city estimates that 150,000 to 300,000 additional workers returned to work on Monday, two weeks after reopening began with construction,
curbside-pickup retail, wholesaling and manufacturing.
Case closed: Finally, someone listened! Daniel Arquette has proclaimed his innocence in a subway stabbing since his April 16 arrest. “I have been cleared of all charges,” Arquette told The News Friday. “I was never in the subway. I committed no crime,” the 57-year-old said. Arquette was arrested shortly after a drunk homeless man in a wheelchair knifed a woman while she waited for a train in Forest Hills. The victim identified Arquette, who who wears a prosthetic leg and uses a wheelchair. The Queens DA has dropped the charges against him. “He was wrongly arrested and he was being wrongly prosecuted,” said Arquette’s lawyer, Todd Spodek. “Now, for the rest of his life if you Google him, his arrest will come up.”
For more on these and many other stories, visit nydailynews.com.