CITYWIDE

Trump Project Stalled Due to Human Remains

A powerful preservation group is asking Mayor Bloomberg to investigate whether the site of the Trump SoHo condo hotel was a stopover on the Underground Railroad. Currently, excavation is stalled on the site at Spring and Varick streets where developer Donald Trump and his partners want to build a 45-story tower. Last week, the Department of Buildings issued a stop-work order after human remains more than 100 years old were uncovered. Historical accounts indicate the remains are related to a graveyard of Spring Street Presbyterian Church, an activist abolitionist church that stood from 1811 to 1968, according to the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society of Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman. The church was nearly burned down in 1834 because of its antislavery work, Mr. Berman said. His letter to the mayor was copied to several African American leaders, including City Council Member Charles Barron, a Democrat of Brooklyn, and Lieutenant Governorelect David Patterson. Messrs. Barron and Patterson were active in the effort to preserve the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan.

— Staff Reporter of the Sun

Queens Man Killed During Shootout

A 25-year-old Queens man was killed yesterday during a shootout in Far Rockaway, police said. Although police did not disclose a reason for the dispute, they said the victim and his brother were involved in an altercation with several men in a car when shots were fired around 10 a.m. on Fernside Place. The man, identified as Laton Spurgeon of Alameda Avenue, was shot in the leg and back and pronounced dead at St. John’s Hospital. Police said Spurgeon’s brother, Tashon Spurgeon, 28, was arrested during the incident and charged with criminal possession of a weapon after police recovered a gun from the scene. Police said they do not believe he shot and killed his brother. The investigation is ongoing.

— Special to the Sun

Homeless Man Dies After Jumping in Front of Train

A homeless man leapt in front of an F train at the West 4th Street station yesterday afternoon, killing himself, police officials said. Witnesses and the train’s motorman said the 40-year-old man jumped in front of the train on the southbound platform just as it was arriving. The man was declared dead by paramedics at the scene. Police are investigating his identity.

— Staff Reporter of the Sun

Criticism of Bloomberg Policy Voiced at Hearing

Several members of a City Council economic development committee yesterday spent much of a two-hour hearing criticizing the Bloomberg administration’s subsidy policies for not sufficiently benefiting businesses owned by women and minorities, as well as not supporting the middle class and resident New Yorkers — even though the administration officials the committee had invited to be witnesses were experts mostly in specific kinds of incentive programs. Still, the committee members, led by a council member from Queens, Thomas White Jr., didn’t appear to be satisfied by the administration’s answers, vowing to hold additional hearings.

— Special to the Sun