12 THE QUEENS COURIER • JULY 13, 2017 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
police beat COMPILED BY EMILY DAVENPORT AND ROBERT POZARYCKI
105th Precinct
Queens Village
Queens Village
pastor gets 15 years
for raping girls
A minister from Queens Village is now
serving a 15-year prison term for raping
two teenage girls in the basement of
the church he formerly led, prosecutors
announced on July 11.
Reuben Chizor, 56, the former head of
the Hope Restoration Ministries based at
his home on Springfi eld Boulevard, was
convicted in June of fi rst- and second-degree
rape, fi rst-degree sexual abuse and
two counts of endangering the welfare
of a child, according to Queens District
Attorney Richard A. Brown.
“Th e defendant took advantage of his
position as a man of the cloth and the
trust placed in him by his followers to satisfy
his depraved desires,” Brown said in
a statement. “Th rough manipulation and
conniving control, he sexually abused his
two young victims for nearly two years.
What the defendant forced his victims to
endure was horrendous, and as punishment,
he now will be spending a lengthy
term behind bars.”
According to the charges, on July 27,
2011, Chizor took the fi rst victim, a then-
14-year-old girl, to his residence in the
basement of the church and raped her.
Th e next month, on Aug. 22, 2011, he
allegedly brought the victim’s then-12-
year-old sister to the basement and sexually
assaulted her.
Prosecutors said the two girls were
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repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted
over a two-year period. Th e girls confi ded
in each other in July of 2015 that they had
been raped by Chizor, and police were
notifi ed soon aft er.
107th Precinct
Flushing, Fresh Meadows,
Jamaica
Fugitive motorist
fi nally arrested for
deadly 1989 crash
A man who has been on the run for
nearly 30 years aft er pleading guilty to
assault in Fresh Meadows has fi nally been
arrested and will start to serve his sentence.
According to the criminal charges,
at 10:25 a.m. on Dec. 3, 1989, Jaipaul
Maharaj (also known as Abdool Persaud
and Ronald Davidson) was driving drunk
and without a license in a 1984 Chevrolet
van when he ran through a red light at the
intersection of 73rd Avenue and Francis
Lewis Boulevard.
Th e van collided struck the passenger
side of a 1986 Toyota. Th e passenger,
Grace Schachnu, suff ered broken ribs, a
fractured cervical, collapsed lungs and
hemorrhaging of the brain. Schachnu
later died in 1994.
Maharaj, who was 36 at the time of the
crash, had been arrested in December
1989 and pleaded guilty to fi rst-degree
assault on Oct. 29, 1990. Maharaj failed to
appear to his sentencing on Dec. 7, 1990,
and a bench warrant was issued for his
arrest. He was later sentenced in absentia
to four to 12 years in jail on Dec. 12, 1990.
Queens District Attorney Richard A.
Brown said that justice was fi nally served
26 1/2 years later when, on July 6, 2017,
the now 63-year-old Maharaj appeared
for a scheduled meeting with the Sullivan
County Department of Probation as
Abdool Persaud; he is on fi ve years’ probation
for an October 2015 conviction.
He was promptly arrested and appeared
before Queens Supreme Court, where he
was remanded to the state Department of
Corrections to begin his sentence.
“It took 26 years, but the victim’s family
fi nally has achieved justice in knowing
that the individual responsible for causing
serious physical injury to their loved
one is now being held accountable for
his actions,” Brown said in a statement.
“If not for a casual inquiry made by a
family member of the victim fortuitously
making its way to the Queens District
Attorney’s Offi ce, the defendant might
very well have escaped punishment for
his crime.”
109th Precinct
College Point, Flushing,
Whitestone
Armed robbers
stole purses, then
went shopping
Police released on the night of July
10 images of a man connected to a
recent armed robbery of two women
on a Flushing street who later used one
of the victim’s credit cards to go shopping
on Long Island.
According to authorities, the holdup
took place at 12:33 a.m. on the morning
of June 5 in the vicinity of Colden
Street and Franklin Avenue, where the
two female victims — ages 45 and 46
— were approached by two male suspects
wearing dark, hooded sweatshirts.
Law enforcement sources said the
crooks pushed the women to the
ground; one of them then displayed
a firearm. The suspects then removed
the victims’ purses — which contained
a cellphone, jewelry, bank cards and
$850 in cash — and then fled the scene
in a minivan that was last seen heading
southbound on Colden Street.
The incident was reported to the
109th Precinct; both women were not
seriously injured.
Police later determined that a man
used one of the stolen bank cards at
8 a.m. on June 5 to make a $50 purchase
from the USA Food Mart on
West Centennial Avenue in Roosevelt,
NY. The NYPD obtained security camera
footage of the suspect, who is
described as a black man who was last
seen wearing a green shirt, beige pants,
a large necklace and eyeglasses.
Anyone with information regarding
the robbery or the suspects’ whereabouts
is urged to call Crime Stoppers
at 800-577-TIPS, visit their website
or send a text message to 274637
(CRIMES), then enter TIP577. All calls
and messages are kept confidential.
115th Precinct
Corona, East Elmhurst, Jackson
Heights
Two life sentences for
murdering women
An East Elmhurst man will spend the
rest of his life in prison aft er he brutally
beat his girlfriend and her daughter,
both of whom he believed to be witches,
with a hammer.
Carlos Alberto Amarillo, 48, was sentenced
to serve two consecutive terms
of life without the possibility of parole.
Amarillo was convicted of two counts
of fi rst-degree murder, fourth-degree
criminal possession of a weapon and
endangering the welfare of a child in
June.
According to trial records, police
responded to a 911 call at an address on
87th Street in East Elmhurst at 12:10 a.m.
on July 29, 2014. Upon their arrival, they
found the body of Estrella Castaneda,
56, face up on the bed with a pillow over
her face and blood soaked into the linens
and walls. Th e rubber grip of the hammer
was found Castaneda’s body.
In another bedroom, police found the
body of Castaneda’s daughter, Lina, 25,
face down with injuries to the head. Th e
hammer was found near Lina’s body.
Lina’s 7-year-old daughter was found
unharmed in another room of the house.
Trial testimony states that Amarillo
called 911 following the murders, stating
that “two females are dead, they
were assassinated, hurry they are dead.
I killed them because they are witches, I
want the police to kill me. I killed them
with a hammer.”
Police arrived at the scene and found
Amarillo walking away from the home
towards the street, holding a Bible in his
hands. Police say that Amarillo stated
that the women were “witches and were
performing voodoo and casting spells”
on him that made him sick.
District Attorney Brown said, “Th is
defendant will rightfully spend the rest
of his natural life behind bars for fatally
beating to death his girlfriend and
her daughter – who was the mother of a
young child who also happened to be in
the residence that night but fortunately
was not harmed.”
Photo via Google Maps
The exterior of Hope Restoration Church on
Springfi eld Boulevard in Queens Village, as
shown in this 2013 Google Maps picture.
Photo via Shutterstock
Photo via Google Maps/Inset courtesy of NYPD
The man pictured at right is wanted in connection
with a recent armed robbery in Flushing.