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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 14 pages • Vol. 42, No. 3 Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 6 • September 6–12, 2019
LABOR DAY SLAY!
Cops charge man after he drives car into cyclist after fi ght in Bushwick
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Both the driver and the biker were heading eastbound down the wrong side of the thoroughfare, between
Fayette and Ellery streets, when the former bashed the cyclist around 6 a.m., according to the authorities.
A fowl scene
Raw chicken carnage in Boerum Hill
Screenshot via Twitter Rain dance
Reporter Kevin Duggan (left) and Deputy Editor Colin Mixson (right, crouching) faced off
in a dodge ball battle to the digital death.
Tragic accident
Girl crushed in B’wick collapse
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By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Police charged a Brownsville man
with murder for allegedly running down
a cyclist he claims looted his car in Bushwick
on Monday, Sept. 2.
Defendant Korey Johnson, 41, mowed
down 47-year-old Fort Greene resident
Robert Donald with his Jeep Grand Cherokee
following a chase on Broadway
near Fayette Street at 6 a.m., according
to a police spokesman.
Johnson claims he confronted the victim
after spotting the man burglarizing
his SUV parked on Marcus Garvey Boulevard
near Ellery Street at 6 a.m., but
their argument turned bloody when the
alleged thief stabbed a second witness in
the arm with a screwdriver, cops said.
The burglar tried to flee on his bicycle,
but the suspect gave chase in his car,
pursuing the victim east along the westbound
lane of Broadway, where he struck
the cyclist, pinning him to a row of parked
cars and flipping his Jeep in the process,
according to authorities. Police and paramedics
rushed to the scene, where they
discovered the biker dead with severe head
wounds, the spokesman said.
The next level
Virtual reality bar expands to
massive new Dumbo space
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Officers held the driver in custody at
the 83rd Precinct, before booking him
on charges of murder and manslaughter
Tuesday, according to the authorities.
The biker is the 15th to be killed by
a motorist in Brooklyn this year and
the 20th to die citywide, compared to
10 biker fatalities in the Five Boroughs
during all of 2018.
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Gross!
A disgusting slew of chicken meat
and bones spilled across Bond Street in
Boerum Hill on Friday morning. The
trail of raw chicken flesh lined the street
between Wyckoff and Bergen streets,
according to one local who stumbled
upon the scene around 9:15 a.m.
“I saw just a massive pile of glistening
meat and bones,” said Cullen
Camic.
The meat must have hit the road recently,
because there was no fowl smell
of rot, but the sound of trucks driving
over the piles of bird carcasses was
seared into Camic’s memory.
“It was just like crunching and
squishy,” he said. “It was intense.”
Camic’s girlfriend Jean Cooney
took a video of the street and sent it
to her friend Sara Vilkomerson, who
uploaded it to Twitter , where it quickly
went viral.
“Does anyone know what the hell
kind of chicken massacre happened in
Boerum Hill?” Vilkomerson tweeted
with the disgusting footage.
Cleaning trucks from the city’s Department
of Sanitation soon arrived
and scooped up the dreck, before street
sweeping vehicles brushed the street,
according to Camic.
A spokeswoman for the department
said the sweepers came to the
scene around 10 a.m. and that a truck
with water will clean the street some
time today.
“A DSNY mechanical broom addressed
the condition at 10:00 a.m. A
flusher (truck with water) is on the
way to address any remaining street
residue,” said Belinda Mager, in an
emailed statement.
The cause of the cluck-up is still under
investigation, Mager said.
Chicken flesh and bones spilled
out onto Bond Street.
Thousands of Brooklyn revelers marched down Eastern Parkway
decked out in flamboyant costumes to celebrate Caribbean culture
at the 52nd annual West Indian Day Parade on Sept. 2. Storm clouds
unleashed torrents of rain on the gaily attired procession, but that
did little to dampen the spirits of merrymakers and elected officials,
who marched from Lincoln Terrace Park to Grand Army Plaza with
a procession of party floats and costumed dancers. “We are gathered
in joy — we’re not worried about a little rain,” said Mayor Bill
de Blasio, who to a break from campaigning for president to march
in the race. “Rain is not going to stop us.” Police had been preparing
for more than 40,000 participants and 1 million spectators
before the rain dampened the turnout, according to Police Chief
Rodney Harrison.
Photo by Marcus Stevens
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Talk about an expansion pack!
A Brooklyn virtual reality arcade
has moved into a massive new
venue in Dumbo, giving twice as
many players the chance to jack
into cyberspace as before.
The newest integration of VR
Bar on Jay Street boasts 12 virtual
reality stations and one upcoming
virtual arena, which will give up to
four people a chance to duke it out
in challenges that will have them
questioning reality, according to
its founder.
“It’s a much more immersive experience,”
said Kishore Doddi.
Doddi’s emporium offers 30 different
games and experiences for beginner,
intermediate, and advanced
skill levels, including stepping into
the vivid world of a Van Gogh painting
or demolishing your friends in
a game of digital dodge ball.
The entrepreneur debuted the
arcade in Carroll Gardens with
three stations in early 2017, before
moving to a prior Dumbo location
next door to his current spot
about a year ago.
The new 5,000 square-foot space
is more than twice the size of its
previous Dumbo location, where
Doddi offers virtual reality experiences
at a rate of $14 for 15 minutes
— although the game master
offers a much needed two-minute
tutorial free of charge.
In the interest of journalism, this
reporter leapt at Doddi’s offer to try
his virtual reality games firsthand,
and the arcade owner suggested a
nice drawing game to help me get
acquainted with the weird world
of cyberspace.
That’s when Brooklyn Paper
Deputy Editor Colin Mixson, who
was on hand with crack freelance
photographer Caroline Ourso, insisted
Doddi jack me into the most
intense experience available, likely
part of some maniacal bid to scramble
my brain, or possibly to obtain
good shots for the article. The next
thing I know, I’m standing 20 stories
above the ground, peering into
the abyss atop a wooden plank jutting
pirate ship-style from the side
of a skyscraper!
Doddi says I’m free to leap off
the plank if I so choose, and, for
some crazy reason, I take the fateful
step into thin air — and literally
fall over — as the simulated
plummet tricks my brain, and my
body follows suit.
Fortunately, Doddi is there to
catch me, as the cackles of my editor
echo from somewhere beyond
my bulbous VR visor.
Seeking vengeance, I challenge
Mixson to a game of virtual dodgeball
— and I’m immediately bested
— as my editor, leaning on his past
experience from covering the arcade’s
Cobble Hill debut, trounces
me 5–0.
But I’m a fast learner — the memory
of Mixson’s shouts of dispair
as I dominate him 5–1 will keep
me warm during my next winter
stakeout.
Doddi’s fun zone doesn’t end
with video games, and the entrepreneur
is in the process of obtaining
a full liquor license for his adult
customers.
But he doesn’t want patrons to get
too tipsy before they plug his video
games directly into their brain.
“If you’re too drunk to drive,
you’re too drunk to do VR,” he
said. “We’ll be extra cognizant
of that.”
About half of his patrons are between
eight and 13 years old so the
actual bar at VR Bar will suit parents
who want to have a drink, while
their kids frolic in cyberspace, according
to Doddi.
The game master is also looking
to partner with real estate firms
by offering customers virtual tours
of properties on the market, and he
recently met with developers CIM
Group who — along with Livwrk
— are erecting the mega-development
dubbed “Front and York”
nearby.
Photo by Caroline Ourso
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
A stone fence crushed a
5-year-old Bushwick girl to
death on Thursday.
Surveillance footage obtained
by Brooklyn Paper shows Alysson
Pinto-Chaumana outside her
Harman Street home near Cyprus
Avenue at approximately
8:55 p.m. on Aug. 29, when
the waist-high fence guarding
the building’s courtyard
falls, striking the child square
in the head.
The girl’s mother — who was
with her at the time — immediately
rushes the girl’s limp
body away from the shattered
fence, footage shows.
Police released a statement
on Friday claiming that the girl
was pulling on the fence at the
time of the collapse.
However, surveillance footage
shows the fence toppling
without provocation, and the
girl was not touching it at the
time of the incident.
After the girl’s mother
f lagged down a passing ambulance,
paramedics rushed
the girl to Wyckoff Hospital,
where she was pronounced dead,
according to authorities.
5-year-old Alysson Pinto-
Chaumana was killed after
Paul Martinka
a piece of fence fell
and hit her on the head in
Bushwick.
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