Bronx News Roundup, June 22

Weather: In the high 70s today, and thunderstorms likely this evening.

Story of the Day: Future of the Muller Center To Be Debated Tonight
A hearing is scheduled tonight to get public input on the fate of the Muller Army Reserve Center, a 55,000-square-foot former military base in Wakefield that the Bloomberg administration wants to turn into a homeless shelter.

Community leaders and elected officials, including BP Ruben Diaz, Jr., strongly oppose the plan, arguing the neighborhood is already over-saturated with homeless shelters. Diaz and education advocates propose the 238th Street site become the new home for the National Guard, currently stationed in an annex of the Kingsbridge Armory--a move they say would free up the Armory space so the city could build a new school there, providing more classroom seats for School District 10, one of the most crowded districts in the city.

The decision was in the hands of the Muller Redevelopment Authority (LRA) -- a panel made up of Diaz, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and Tokumbo Shobowale, the chief of staff for Deputy Mayor Robert Steel. Last fall, Diaz intentionally missed a scheduled meeting of the authority in order to delay a vote on the issue. Tonight's hearing starts at 6 p.m. at P.S. 21, 715 225th Street.

Quick Hits: 

The Bronx man accused of beating his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter to death told police he punched the toddler because she wasn't eating her dinner.

A city bus driver says she was assaulted by a 17-year-old who boarded in Fordham, after she tried to stop the girl from getting on the bus with her dog.

Police are looking for the suspects in a Kingsbridge Heights shooting on Monday.

The body of a woman found in upstate Duchess County on June 12 has been identified as that of 22-year-old Bronx resident Jasmine Maxine Nunez.

This week's Village Voice takes a scathing look at State Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sr. and his vehement opposition to gay marriage. Just an excerpt: "There is little naturally charming about Díaz...He is not especially handsome, and wears cowboy hats so garish even LBJ would be put to shame wearing one of them. He speaks about himself in the third person with neither charisma or irony." Ouch.

Speaking of heavy criticism of the Diazes: the New York Daily News today takes aim at the younger, with an editorial titled "Diaz the job-killer," which blasts the Borough President over the still-vacant Kingsbridge Armory (in light of the report Diaz released yesterday of potential uses for the site, which the piece referred to as a "267-page report that amounts to a humiliating, disastrous zilch.")

Two sisters who had their late mother buried at St. Raymond's Cemetery claim her headstone was put in the wrong place.

A 24-year old radiology student at Bronx Community College, who moved here from El Salvador to escape gang violence, is facing deportation.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor talks about growing up in the South Bronx and discovering she had diabetes.