MANHATTAN

MAN, 76, DIES AFTER FALLING DOWN ELEVATOR SHAFT An elderly man who was preparing to take his wife on a cruise plunged to his death yesterday when he fell down an elevator shaft at his West Side apartment building, police said.

Edward Helig, 76, took the fatal fall at 3:18 p.m., when he tried to exit a service elevator jammed between the 14th and 15th floors of his building at 168 W. 86th St., police said.

Helig and his wife were packing at their 15th floor penthouse for a vacation when he decided to go downstairs to get a hand truck to help haul their luggage. When Helig picked up the hand truck on the ground floor, the doorman told him not to use the service elevator because it only ran Monday through Friday, according to a source.

Helig ignored the doorman and rode up in the service elevator, which jammed right before it reached the penthouse floor, the source said. Helig fell down the shaft when he squeezed out of the elevator car in an attempt to reach one of the floors.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

POLICE BLOTTER

BOY INJURED AFTER TOUR BUS CRASHES INTO OVERPASS A 12-year-old boy was critically injured after a chartered bus filled with Polish-speaking tourists from Toronto crashed into an overpass on a lane of the southbound FDR Drive at 61st Street yesterday afternoon.

The bus was too tall to pass beneath the overpass according to police. Despite signs warning of height restrictions, the driver, 56-year-old Yu Yuk-Ho, drove the bus, 13 feet 6 inches tall, into an area off-limits to commercial traffic and designated for vehicles measuring less than 9 feet 6 inches. Mr. Yuk-Ho, also of Toronto, has been charged with disobeying traffic signs.

The impact of the collision caused part of the bus to be sheared off. Several passengers were injured and traffic was stopped on the busy highway.

Police report that there were between 30 and 40 passengers on the bus at the time of the accident. The riders were evacuated from the vehicle and eventually taken to Bellevue and New York hospitals, most with only minor injuries. Authorities confirmed that the critically injured boy would survive.

The driver was issued several additional summonses for operating an overweight vehicle and improperly operating a commercial vehicle on a highway.

– Special to the Sun

POLICE ARREST MAN IN MURDER OF FORMER LOVER Police arrested a man accused of murdering his former lover at her Brooklyn apartment yesterday morning and stabbing her new boyfriend and another woman on his way out of the building. Police charged Norman McLean with second-degree murder for fatally stabbing Sharon McLean, 42, at 1 a.m. yesterday at 280 Parkside Ave. in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. McLean was pronounced dead at King’s County Hospital from multiple stab wounds.

Police would not say whether the two had ever been married. According to police sources, the victim’s three children were in the apartment as a heated argument escalated. Several neighbors heard screams during the early hours of Sunday morning and called 911.

Franklin Goodwin, a resident in the apartment building where the stabbings occurred said that he heard “a lot of people out in the hallway” but thought that the noises were from a neighbor’s holiday party.

The suspect encountered the victim’s new boyfriend and another woman outside as he left the building, police said. He attacked the pair, stabbing them before leaving the scene. The two sustained minor injuries and are said to be in stable condition at King’s County Hospital.

– Special to the Sun

ROBBERY SUSPECT ACCIDENTALLY SHOOTS HIMSELF A man accidentally shot himself in the face while robbing a deli in the South Bronx, police said.

Latie Whitley, 34, and another man walked into the 20/20 Deli at 362 Willis Ave. at about 12:30 a.m. Saturday, police said. They held the store’s owners at gunpoint, swiped about $1,400, and fled. At some point, Mr. Whitley’s gun fired, grazing him on the face, police said. Officers found him shortly thereafter, standing outside his apartment on East 143rd Street. He was arrested and taken to Lincoln Medical Center in stable condition. Charges against him were pending, and police were still searching for his accomplice, said a police spokesman, Sergeant Kevin Farrell.

– Associated Press

ALBANY

GRANDPARENTS LOBBY FOR WIDER LEGAL RIGHTS AS PARENTS Grandparents raising their grandchildren complained of their lack of legal rights during a conference last week in Albany.

They said they cannot authorize medical and mental health treatment, get school records, write absence excuses, permit a child to be in a play, club, or sport, or enroll the child in school or in the grandparent’s health plan.

Additional barriers make receiving welfare and other social services approved for the child more difficult or impossible for grandparents now caring for more than 400,000 New York children, according to AARP. A state measure called the Caregiver Consent Bill would change much of that.

– Associated Press

STATEWIDE

SCHUMER: FEDERAL RULES ON SCREENING CARGO JEOPARDIZES SECURITY

Senator Schumer charged yesterday that the federal government’s proposed cargo screening rules would leave gaping holes in New York’s air security, putting millions of passengers at risk.

The federal Transportation Security Administration released a plan this month to tighten air cargo security by checking the backgrounds of workers who handle freight and restricting access to sections of airports used for loading and unloading cargo. The plan also requires cargo airlines to screen people who board their planes.

Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said the rules fall far short of protecting the 9.6 million passengers a year who fly into or out of New York-area airports on jetliners carrying unscreened cargo.

“The holidays aren’t just the busiest travel time of the year – they are the busiest shipping time of the year, too,” Mr. Schumer said at a news conference in his Manhattan office. “But even as people getting into planes this weekend see strong new precautions at the gate, the cargo and mail flying in the belly of the plane is still virtually unexamined.”

Mr. Schumer had several criticisms of the TSA’s proposed rules, which are open to public comment until January 10.

* He said the TSA has ruled out screening 100% of cargo because it would be too expensive, but said “there is no reason any cargo…should go on a passenger aircraft without being inspected.”

* Although there is a “known shipper” system designed to prequalify shippers as safe, the TSA says it will consider letting unknown shippers put cargo on passenger flights.

* He said they ignore a recommendation from the September 11 commission that every passenger aircraft have at least one hardened container in which suspicious cargo could be shipped.

Mr. Schumer also asked President Bush to put “the full weight of his office” behind passage of bottled-up legislation to overhaul intelligence agencies.

The legislation passed the Senate almost unanimously but stumbled in the House on objections by two committee chairmen.

Mr. Schumer is among the authors of an amendment to the bill that would require the TSA to develop better technologies for air cargo security.

– Associated Press