A 2008 cold case involving an East Village woman sexually assaulted in her apartment resulted in the conviction of a man already behind bars for a similar attack, the Manhattan District Attorney announced today.
George Poirier, 39, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for sexually motivated burglary and sexual abuse in the first degree. In April of 2008 the 28-year-old victim was entering her apartment on East Seventh Street near Avenue B when the Bronx resident pushed her inside, locked the door, and sexually assaulted her. During the attack the victim bit Mr. Poirier’s arm, drawing blood that was subsequently entered into a state DNA database. At the time, the DNA did not yield any matches, and the case went dormant.
But one year later Mr. Poirier’s DNA was entered into the database as part of his conviction for a charge of sexual abuse tied to a string of groping attacks on four different women on a single day in May, according to a criminal complaint. He was then tied to the 2008 attack. Read more…
It’s a lament almost as common in the neighborhood as complaints about bar noise — property taxes are way too high. Just two days ago, the owner of Mama’s Food Shop said that his property taxes had nearly quadrupled since he took over the business around 2007. Now, District Attorney Cyrus Vance is urging reform of the assessment system for the taxes, which a grand jury found is rife with abuse. “Some unscrupulous individuals and entities routinely try to cheat the City out of this valuable revenue stream by filing false information with City agencies,” he said in a press release. In one case cited by the grand jury, “60 percent of property owners surveyed who derived income from signs posted on their property failed to report that income to the Tax Commission when they sought to reduce their taxes,” the statement noted.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance just announced the indictment of Luis Martinez, the man accused of firing at two police officers in a wild gun battle last last month that culminated in the Baruch Houses. Mr. Martinez is charged with attempted murder in the first degree and criminal possession of a weapon. During the melee an officer narrowly avoided being shot in the gut thanks to an extra ammo clip on his belt that deflected the bullet. The violence prompted Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to renew a call for a gun buy-back program in the neighborhood. “A metal gun magazine and its leather pouch was all that stood in the way of a bullet piercing an officer’s abdomen, after he was fired upon by this defendant,” Mr. Vance said in a press release.
