OUR CITY, YOUR PAPER
No one covers the city like the Daily News. For more than a century, New York’s Hometown Newspaper has been your eyes and ears — and your voice. Do you have a story you think we should tell? Call us at (212) 210-NEWS or email us at news@ 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:
Porch pirate: A Bronx porch pirate swiped two pairs of hightop sneakers from a special needs child and then urinated in the boy’s driveway, The News exclusively reported on Friday. “That was the icing on the disgusting, horrible person cake,” said infuriated mom Tisha Murray-George, 43. “Wow. When I first looked, I was like, ‘Is he peeing?’ Oh my God.” The heartless heist was captured on a doorbell camera at Murray-George’s Morris Park home. Her son Amari needed the stolen kicks to take his first independent steps, his mother said. Murray-George hopes the video will help cops find the suspect.
Exonerated: Two years after Grant Williams was paroled for a Staten Island murder, he was exonerated for the crime. Williams spent 23 years behind bars, insisting he was innocent in the 1996 killing of Shdell Lewis outside the Stapleton Houses. On Thursday, a judge finally heard him. “I used to tell everyone in prison, ‘I’m innocent,’ ” Williams said outside court. “They’d say, ‘Aw Williams, everybody says that.’ I’d say, ‘I’m telling you the truth. One day you’re gonna see me on the news, and you’re gonna see that I was innocent.’ ” Williams once worked in the recording studio of legendary Staten Island rappers Wu-Tang Clan, and was joined in celebrating by his friend Ghostface Killah. “I’m glad it’s over now. It was like a ton of bricks just being lifted,” said Killah, born Dennis Coles, 41. This was Staten Island’s first wrongful conviction case.
Chip cop: An NYPD cop who used a Lays potato chip bag to save a stabbing victim’s life relied on his emergency medical training to come up with the DIY save, he said Tuesday. Officer Ronald Kennedy, a former EMT turned cop, said he instinctively knew what to do after arriving outside a bodega on July 7 to find Dylan Ubiles lying on the sidewalk gasping for air. “I’ve been dealing with emergencies for quite some time and I just know it’s best to keep the person calm, in any situation,” Kennedy said. “With the squaredoff edges on the bag and the tape we created that seal so that the air didn’t go in and collapse his lungs,” Kennedy explained. Ubiles survived.
Music man: COVID, what COVID? Mayor de Blasio announced Thursday that the city will host five large-scale concerts next month and urged people from near and far to flock to the Big Apple for the “unforgettable” events. The five free concerts, one in each borough, will take place during the week starting Aug. 16, culminating in a previously announced Aug. 21 gig on the Great Lawn in Central Park. Meanwhile, New York is in the midst of a troubling uptick in coronavirus cases due to the delta variant. “I am issuing a FOMO alert,” de Blasio said, using the “Fear of Missing Out” acronym popular with younger generations. “Unless you want to spend the rest of your life saying, ‘oh my god I missed it,’ you should get to New York City in the month of August.”