New York Desk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
CITYWIDE
HOSPITALS TO BE EQUIPPED TO COPE WITH DIRTY BOMB ATTACK
The health department said it plans to spend nearly $1.4 million equipping hospitals with radiation detection devices that might become essential if terrorists detonated a dirty bomb. The equipment, largely paid for with federal grants, could help medical centers diagnose the thousands of people who likely would flood hospitals after such a blast, the health department said. The devices would go to public and private hospitals, whose staff members would be trained how to recognize and treat radiation injuries and how to protect and decontaminate themselves while dealing with patients who may have been exposed.
– Associated Press
BRONX
4 IRAQI CHILDREN LEAVE HOSPITAL AFTER UNDERGOING HEART SURGERY
Four Iraqi children with life-threatening heart defects left a Bronx hospital yesterday after successfully undergoing open heart surgery. Through its Operation Iraqi Hearts, Montefiore Medical Center has performed such operations on more than 500 children around the world in the past 15 years. “When you look into a heart, it’s not a Muslim heart, it’s not a Jewish heart. We are all the same,” a pediatric heart surgeon, Dr. Samuel Weinstein, said earlier this month after the Muslim children – three boys and a girl, ages 6 to 14 – arrived. One of the youngsters, 11-year-old Wsam Rabea, waited two years in Iraq to see a cardiologist, developing diabetes and a seizure disorder in the meantime. His father, a taxi driver in Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, crisscrossed Iraq looking for the right doctors. By the time the boy’s heart valve blockage was diagnosed five years ago, when he was 6, he was given only a few years to live. The children’s families had first sought help from the U.S. military.
– Associated Press
POLICE BLOTTER
MAN BOUND HAND AND FOOT DIES IN FIRE
Firefighters found a Manhattan man dead in his apartment yesterday after putting out a fire in his home, police reported. According to fire officials, firefighters put out a blaze in a third-floor apartment on West 18th Street in Chelsea yesterday around 3:30 p.m. When the flames were extinguished, firefighters discovered the body of a 45-year-old man, bound hand and foot, police said. As of last night, police had not released his name. It was not clear what material he was bound with, police said. It also was not clear whether the man was clothed when firefighters reached him. He was found alone in his apartment, police said. According to police, the medical examiner is investigating the cause of death. Fire officials reported that the blaze was contained to the man’s apartment.
– Special to the Sun
FOUR ARRESTED FOR POSSESSING DEFACED FIREARMS
Four men were arrested yesterday for possessing defaced firearms, including one police officer who was suspended after the arrest, police said. According to police, officers in Washington Heights responded to a 911 call of an assault taking place around 1:34 a.m. yesterday at 180th Street and Audubon Avenue. Officers stopped a black GMC Yukon, and found three guns with defaced serial numbers in the vehicle, police said. Police arrested Officer Donald Medard, 30, who has been on the force since 2003 and who worked in the 104th Precinct in Queens, as well as Michael Jacob, 22,Wendell Robinson, 26, and Claude Dorsica, 20, all of Queens. They are charged with criminal possession of a weapon and possession of defaced firearms. None of the defaced guns was Officer Medard’s police-issue weapon, which was also in his possession at the time, police said. The Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating, police said.
– Special to the Sun