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Hello, 911? Hey, I got your thief right here! Bronx auto-store clerk Nelson Lozanda made the call of duty yesterday, chasing and tackling a suspected shoplifter, then holding him down with one hand while phoning cops with the other. "There are a lot of thieves coming in here. They are thinking just because it's not our store, we are not going to respond to it," said Lozada, 23, one of two workers who grabbed the alleged perp about a block from an AutoZone store on East 149th Street. The drama started in the store at about noon when a man...

BRONX, NY (PIX11)— "I asked them to lower their voices and then they started in on me, 'Shut the f--- up, white boy. We'll beat the s--t out of you, cracker.'" Jason Fordell, 29, of the Bronx, said that was the first exchange he had with three black men and a Hispanic man on the #4 subway train near Grand Central early Sunday morning, and by the time the train got to Fordham Road, Fordell says he was being beaten and stomped by other passengers who were egging the original group on. "Eventually, half the car" joined in, Fordell told...

Snakes alive! - the cobra has been found. The Bronx Zoo's escaped snake was snared in the House of Reptiles on Thursday, six days after she slithered out of her enclosure. "We found our snake and we're very happy," Jim Breheny, the zoo's director, told the Daily News. The fanged fugitive was spotted coiled in a corner around 9 a.m., during one of three daily sweeps by a half-dozen zoo workers. Using special tongs and hooks, they easily apprehended the deadly Egyptian cobra, which is now under observation. "We knew it was going to be a game of patience. We...

A highly venomous Egyptian cobra that went missing at the Bronx Zoo was found Thursday after nearly a week on the lam in the reptile house, zoo officials said. The approximately 24-inch snake was found coiled in a dark corner of the reptile house, about 200 feet from where it had escaped from a holding cage outside the exhibit into a space described by officials as a labyrinth of pipes and equipment.

It's deadly, and it's out there, waiting. That might sound like the trailer for a campy monster flick, but it's a real concern at New York's Bronx Zoo, where officials and staff are scrambling to find a deadly Egyptian cobra that slithered away from its home last Friday and hasn't been seen since. The zoo's Reptile House remained closed Monday as a precaution while workers searched for the runaway reptile, a zoo spokeswoman confirmed to FoxNews.com. While the roughly 20-inch-long Egyptian cobra -- armed with a massive dose of lethal venom that it injects into its victims -- has been...

Fourteen people died on Saturday when a bus returning from a casino flipped onto its side on I-95 in the Bronx and was sliced in half by the support pole for a large sign. The bus driver told police he lost control after being clipped by a tractor trailer. Police began a search for the truck, which did not stop after the crash, according to New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne. There were at least 31 passengers aboard the bus and many of the injuries were the result of severe head trauma............

Students at Bronx high school pushed her to the ground A Bronx teacher suffered a miscarriage after breaking up a fight between two students over a chair, school officials said Thursday. Lissedia Batista, 27, was elbowed in the stomach, pushed, and fell to the floor as she tried to get in the middle of a fight between two students. Batista was four months pregnant and was taken by ambulance to North Centeral Bronx Hospital, where she miscarried her baby. The two students involved in the fight have been suspended.

Bronx teacher admits: I'm an ex-hookerBy KEVIN FASICK and YOAV GONEN Last Updated: 6:48 AM, September 27, 2010 Meet Melissa Petro -- the teacher who gives a new twist to "sex ed." The tattooed former hooker and stripper has been teaching art in a Bronx elementary school for three years, The Post has learned. Calling herself a "for mer sex worker," the well-liked teacher has been shockingly up front about her past -- posting online accounts of her sexcapades in Mexico and Lon don. But in her boldest move, the 30-year-old posted an essay this month claiming she also had...

Is it possible that the Bronx Four operated alone, without any connection to foreign terrorists. In an elaborate sting operation, four African-American Muslim men were arrested Wednesday night in New York City for attempting to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and for conspiring to shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, NY. James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen were friends who had met while serving time in prison and it was there that they converted to Islam. The bombs in their possession were fake; supplied to them by an FBI informant...

NEW YORK — For nearly a year, Shahed Hussain would slip into his role as a wealthy Pakistani businessman and head for Newburgh. He was “Maqsood” when he arrived at local mosque Masjid Al-Ikhlas driving a BMW, or maybe Hummer depending on the day. He was there to listen for Islamic extremism and report back to the FBI, he said. Hussain testified on Friday in the federal trial of four Newburgh men accused of trying to shoot down planes at Stewart Air National Guard Base and blow up a synagogue and Jewish center in the Bronx. The men — James...

Twisted trees and downed power lines littered the streets of the Bronx and Long Island this morning after strong storms that broke a lengthy heat wave ripped through the region Sunday afternoon, bringing cooler weather but leaving scores without power. And on Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service confirmed what many Bronx residents already believed: A tornado touched down in the Riverdale neighborhood on Sunday. Officials said the twister struck at approximately 2:50 to 3 p.m., and cut a swath 100 yards wide and 0.6 miles long. The maximum wind speeds were around 100 mph, according to the weather service....

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.justice.gov/usao/mow/news2010/harrison.ind.htm JULY 9, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BLACK MARKET TRAVEL AGENTS 38 DEFENDANTS INDICTED IN MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR FRAUD LOCAL INVESTIGATION EXPOSES NATIONWIDE NETWORK THAT USED STOLEN IDENTITIES, CREDIT CARDS TO PURCHASE AIRLINE TICKETS KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced today that 38 defendants from across the United States have been charged in a series of indictments that allege an extensive network of black market travel agents who used the stolen identities of thousands of victims as part of a multi-million dollar fraud scheme...

MARK SERRANO says he spends 98 percent of his money on sneakers and the rest on food. He looks it. Thin as a skeleton, he sports spotless black Nikes — one of more than 200 pairs he owns. But collecting every new shoe he likes can pose a problem: how to make the rest of his outfit live up to his footwear, especially given new sneaker styles with hard-to-match metallic finishes in offbeat colors like cranberry and copper. Problem solved. For a growing number of sneaker fanatics, Da Bakery, a Bronx store specializing in graffiti-inspired clothing, cranks out custom-designed T-shirts,...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal authorities raided a government-funded clinic run by the state Senate's majority leader, one day after New York's attorney general accused him of siphoning $14 million from it. About a dozen FBI and IRS agents and investigators from the attorney general's office appeared Wednesday at the Soundview Healthcare Network in the Bronx, where a big canopy above the front door lists Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. as its president and CEO.....

A Bronx charter school is under fire from parents who say a teacher bullied kids -- and even forced one child to tell his crush, a girl, that he was gay. According to court papers filed this week, the teacher, Jared Alessandroni, 29, threatened to "out" a straight 9-year-old boy, James Pastrana, to his class at the South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures and the Arts, unless James told his crush he was gay. "I was so humiliated," said Pastrana, who reluctantly scribbled the false confession in a note to the girl. "It started to spread around the whole...

High unemployment is spreading in New York City beyond the poorest neighborhoods to once-secure middle-class enclaves, where some residents are falling behind on rent and mortgage payments. Among the hardest-hit spots are the northern Bronx and southeastern Queens. Both areas have seen unemployment double since the third quarter of 2007, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. "The recovery in the labor market is a long way off and it will be a long time coming to middle-income neighborhoods," said James Parrott, the institute's deputy director and chief economist. Close to half of all New Yorkers work...

Bronx advocates said that the City Council vote on Monday to reject a $310 million project to build a mall inside the Kingsbridge Armory provided an opportunity to come up with a more community-oriented plan for the massive red-brick castle. City Council members who voted down the project 45 to 1, with one abstention, said that the plan, proposed by the Related Companies, would have created hundreds of jobs that would have paid at or around the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, pay that they called too low to support local families. They wanted Related to pledge that...

She went out with a bang, and it's left her Bronx family fuming. Glatha Byrd's final send-off was "apocalyptic" -- as the hearse carrying her body exploded and caught fire on the Major Deegan Expressway, says family lawyer James Franzetti. The family has filed suit in Bronx Supreme Court over the May 13, 2008, incident, accusing the Griffin Peters Funeral Home of causing some of Byrd's relatives "severe and serious" injuries. Valerie Davis, wife of the Harlem funeral home's owner, Keith Davis, called the suit "ridiculous." She said she had heard the relatives, who are also related to her...

In the Bronx, a Clash of Cultures Turns Violent Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Community leaders organized meetings at Al Tawba mosque in Claremont to address fear and frustration expressed by many local West African immigrants who have experienced tensions with the local black American residents. Published: October 19, 2009 The storefronts on a stretch of Webster Avenue in the Claremont neighborhood in the South Bronx tell the story of local shifts as well as any census: a Senegalese-run 99-cent store, an African video store, an African-run fast-food spot, a mosque, several African restaurants. A Community Struggles The owner of...

It's the fried-chicken defense. A lawyer for one of four men accused of plotting to bomb Bronx synagogues complained on Thursday that a government informant plied the suspects with food. "You can't watch the tapes that you don't see eating going on," said Marilyn Reader, lawyer