Bronx News Roundup, Friday, May 13

Eery start to this Friday the 13th at Bronx News Network. As you can tell, we've experienced some technical difficulties of late. Our website administrator went down last night and all posts from Tuesday on were removed. We're told the posts will be restored soon. We just received access to the site at about 12:30 p.m. In any case, we're back. On to the news!

Weekend Weather: Cloudy and warm today. Tomorrow, a foggy morning  might give way to some drizzle in the afternoon. The real rain is supposed to hit Sunday, just in time for the Bronx parade collision (more on this in Story of the Day). 

Story of the Day: Bronx Parades on Collision (Con)Course
On Sunday afternoon, the Bronx Puerto Rican Day Parade will party its way down the Grand Concourse from E. Tremont to E. 167th Street. Just six blocks south, the face and outspoken mouthpiece of New York's anti-gay marriage movement, Bronx State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., will be leading a group of other like-minded gay marriage opponents in a "Rally to Defend Marriage." Diaz, who was born in Puerto Rico, says he did not consider changing the route or date of his rally and the president of the Puerto Rican Day Parade, Francisco Gonzalez didn't seem to have a problem with it.

But gay marriage advocates and AIDS activists do have a problem with it. Diaz's anti-gay marriage rally will coincide with the annual New York AIDS Walk in Central Park, leading the state senator's critics say the rally will stunt acceptance of gays and the cause of wiping out AIDS. "We are distressed that Sen. Diaz would focus his attention on increasing homophobia," Marjorie Hill of Midtown's Gay Men's Health Crisis told Metro. A counter-protest is taking shape, which could mean fireworks on the Concourse. Diaz, who has two gay brothers and a gay niece, denies the homophobic label and say he is expecting a love fest on Sunday, telling the Daily News: "We're respecting our love for life and humanity in the Bronx."

The Tremont Tribune, a BxNN publication, has this editorial on the matter. 

Quick Hits:
Drivers navigating the Bronx’s Claremont neighborhood beware, the city is reducing its speed limit on a quarter-mile stretch there to 20 miles per hour, 10 miles less than the city's default speed limit of 30 m.p.h. That pilot program coincides with another speed-reduction effort: the installing new electronic signs that will tell drivers to slow down, using an ominous digitized skeleton, to drive home the point.

At an attempted murder trial in the Bronx, an officer testified that ticket fixing was "a common courtesy" dealt with by union reps.

A Bronx man who won $18.5 million in a lawsuit against the city after spending two decades in prison for a rape he didn't commit, had the award taken back by an appeals court.

Nine city schools, including the Bronx's Herbert H. Lehman High School, Banana Kelly High School, Bronx High School of Business, Grace H. Dodge Career and Tech, will be Re-Started last year, rather than closed.

John Rose is hoping to overcome cerebral palsy and win a seat on the Co-op City board of directors.

Bronx Crime Watch: Arrest in Morrisania Murder

A 43-year-old Bronx man has been arrested and charged with killing a 27-year-old woman in her Washington Avenue apartment, according police.

On Sunday, at around 8 a.m., police responded to reports of an unconscious person at 1343 Washington Avenue (actually between the Morrisania and Claremont neighborhoods). They found Stella Ulamayeva, 27, unconscious and unresponsive. EMS responded and pronounced her dead on arrival.

Yesterday, the Medical Examiner's Office said Ulamayeva's death was the result of an assault. Now, police say they arrested Francisco Rodriguez, 43, who lives near Westchester Square, and charged him with Ulamayeva's murder.

Bronx News Roundup, Nov. 24

A NYPD outdoor firing range in City Island will move to a new 40-acre indoor police academy in Queens. Although City Island residents are celebrating the removal of the firing range, they are still upset that the range will still be used for bomb disposal, which creates a significant amount of unpleasant noise.

The Bronx fire department suspects that Sunday's four-alarm fire in Claremont was started by a crack pipe. Multiple crack pipes were found in a room rented by former New York Knicks player Dean Meminger. However, it is not official that the crack pipes belonged to Meminger, who is in critical condition at the burn unit in Jacobi Hospital.

A New York judge plans to dismiss the case of a Bronx man, William McCaffrey, after he spent four years in prison as an innocent man accused of raping a woman. The woman recently confessed that she lied about the rape. McCaffrey was previously released on bail in September of this year.

Lawyers representing the four of the five men charged with the shooting incidents that included the shooting of 15 year-old Vada Vasquez asked for protective custody for their clients in jail.

The Bronx man, Vincent Martinez, who pulled the emergency brake on the D subway on Saturday night after witnessing a murder tells his story to the Daily News. Although some sources criticized Martinez's decision to pull the brake, which stopped the subway, Mayor Bloomberg defended his choice.

The New York Times profiled a 99 year-old lifelong Bronx resident, Sarah Gellert, who lives alone in her apartment. The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund supports The Jewish Association for Services of the Aged, which helped Gellert obtain a much-needed hearing aid.