CARBONDALE — The Carbondale police officer who committed suicide late last month was under investigation by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office in a juvenile sex crime case and was scheduled to be interviewed by detectives the day after he died.

The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office said it had been investigating allegations of a sexual nature, potentially with a minor. Carbondale Police officer Nino Santiago Sr. was a person of interest in the case, according to Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson.

The Carbondale Police Department issued a press release on Wednesday, acknowledging the investigation, despite that on Monday police chief Gene Schilling told KDNK that he wasn’t aware of the allegations.

“Approximately two weeks prior to his death, officer Santiago personally notified police chief Gene Schilling that officer Santiago was under investigation by the Arapahoe County Sheriff with regard to an alleged domestic sexual assault approximately eight years ago,” according to the press release. “Officer Santiago denied any involvement. He further indicated that he had been scheduled for an interview with Arapahoe County detectives on Wednesday, March 23, 2011.”

Officer Santiago was on duty and in a police car when he killed himself in a parking lot between a school and church in Carbondale on March 22.

Robinson said the allegations, which came from a family member in Arapahoe County’s jurisdiction, date back from 2004 to 2008.

“We had not gone far enough in our investigation to determine the validity of the allegation,” Robinson said. “But it would have been allegations involving a juvenile potentially.”

Robinson said the investigation that began just a few months ago ended when Santiago killed himself.

Robinson said he couldn’t discuss details in order to protect the potential victim and the sheriff’s office had not been able to confirm or deny the allegation during the three-month investigation, which was in the preliminary stage.

Since the investigation was in process, no charges had been filed and Arapahoe County had not contacted the Carbondale Police Department, Schilling determined that Santiago would remain on the job during the investigation, according to the press release.

“With this release my hope is that the citizens of Carbondale can move forward,” reads Schilling’s statement.

Robinson said the department had not gathered enough evidence to press criminal charges and the investigation is now closed as a result of Santiago’s death.

Robinson said his office did not notify Carbondale police or the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office because of the early nature of the ongoing investigation.

Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario said his department was aware of the investigation on the morning Santiago killed himself because he had discussed it with Schilling.

“We hadn’t ruled it as a suicide and we were looking for answers,” Vallario said Wednesday. “I know for certain it was the chief because we were advised of the investigation that morning as a possible motive.”

In an interview with KDNK in his office Monday, Schilling denied any knowledge of the investigation.

“I don’t have anything that I know of from any law enforcement entities or anyone that I’ve been able to have anything that says that that’s occurring,” Schilling said. “I’ve heard the rumors, but I don’t have any concrete evidence from law enforcement, or otherwise, that that was in fact so.”

But in a follow-up interview Wednesday with KDNK News, Schilling said his response was in regards to being contacted by any outside law enforcement agencies about an investigation into Santiago.

“I can’t say that it felt dishonest or not,” Schilling said. “I can just tell you that there’s times I have to answer questions with what I’m able to. It may feel dishonest, but the nature of the answer was not meant to be dishonest. It was meant to be not divulging all the information that I have and there are many times I can’t do that.”

Carbondale Mayor Stacey Bernot said she knew there was an investigation into one of the officers prior to Santiago’s death. But she had no details.

Schilling told her it was only just allegations at the time and nothing to be concerned about. But now that the specific allegation has come to light, Bernot said the matter needs to be looked into.

“We all have a lot of questions that we need answers to,” Bernot said. “This is concerning to the community. We need to do our best to get answers to the questions and be able to move forward.”

Moments later, the boy was dead. Hit by a postal truck whose driver didn’t even see him.

Police didn’t charge the truck driver. Accidents between motorists and pedestrians, like the one that killed Alexander, are common at this Brooklyn intersection—one of the city’s worst. It’s a five-way whirlwind of cars, busses, and suddenly-stopping delivery trucks where two people have died in the past year and where 11 serious accidents occurred between 1995 and 2005.

Despite the dangers, New Yorkers are increasingly turning to their bikes as a cheaper, greener source of transportation. In fact, biking is up 35 percent this year, according to the Department of Transportation. At the same time, 23 cyclists died last yea the highest number in eight years. In New York State, about 25 percent of non-motorists who died in fatal highway accidents were cyclists—nearly double the national average, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Bike advocacy groups estimate that there are thousands of collisions resulting in injuries between cyclists and motorists in the state every year. Collisions are harder to track than fatal accidents, however, since many incidents go unreported.

Paint Me A Lane

To try to make the city’s streets safer for cyclists, the Department of Transportation has blanketed streets in bike lanes in recent years—so far 90 miles of bike lanes have been created, and an additional 110 miles are planned by the summer of 2009. Nonethless, “deadly intersections” such as Boerum Place and Livingston Street account for thousands of the city’s bike accidents every year, the result of a combination of poor planning and dangerous drivers.

“There aren’t too many people in my family that I would want to put on a bike on Houston Street or Delancey,” said Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, a bike advocacy group. “The dominant factors are speeding and reckless driving. When two wide streets meet one another, it’s a problematic intersection.”

The area of downtown Brooklyn where Toulouse was hit got extensive bike lanes in May. But it’s still a tricky place to navigate—several wide avenues meet in the area, and it’s also where vehicles get on and off the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges Boerum Place leads directly to the Brooklyn Bridge itself. Worse still, the area is encircled by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The result is a traffic-laden array of avenues where cars often move at speeds not often seen in most New York streets. The bike paths have done little to help cyclists, according to one local expert.

“Bike paths are only good if cyclists follow it and all the rules are enforced. But they’re not,” said Tony Scarselli, the manager of the Brooklyn Heights Bike Shoppe, which is in the area. “You see cars and taxis double-parked in bike lanes, and people don’t care.”
Cars and trucks blocking bike lanes is such a problem that there’s now a popular website, mybikelane.com, where people in New York and around the world can post pictures such illegally parking. Each vehicle’s license plate is recorded; there are many repeat offenders.
Even some cyclists ignore bike lanes. Outside of Scarselli’s shop, William Ortega was biking on the sidewalk, up Smith Street, even though it has a bike lane.

“It’s too crazy here,” said Ortega, who commutes to his job at a downtown Brooklyn bank using his bike, unless there’s snow on the ground. “Drivers don’t care about bike lanes. Cops don’t either. People are always double-parked in them and they never get a ticket.”

The New York Police Department would not respond to inquiries about enforcing bike lanes, but Ortega has a point. It almost seems like double-parking in a bike lane isn’t against the law. Biking around the area’s lanes, it is rare to find a moment when they’re completely unimpeded. This is particularly true in the dense, downtown core of Brooklyn, where delivery trucks and buses stop at offices every few feet.
“When there’s a UPS truck in the middle of a bike train, it forces you to go into traffic,” said Jennifer Clunie, who works at the New York Bicycling Coaltion, a cyclist advocacy and education group. “Motorists see cyclists as stationary objects, so they aren’t on the lookout for someone coming out of a bike lane. At the same time, a lot of cyclists don’t know how to properly avoid cars in that situation.”

Scott Gastel, from the Department of Transportation, defended the DOT’s bike lanes by arguing that some roads simply wouldn’t work with lanes because they are too small or too congested, and so his department tries to build lanes onto alternate routes.

“What’s important isn’t where we’re putting the lanes, where we’re not putting the lanes,” he said. “Look at Queens Boulevard, we put a lane in the area, but not on Queens Boulevard because it’s safer.”

Despite such reassurances, cyclist Ortega says he’s staying on the sidewalk, especially since he often sees drivers swerving in and out of bike lanes.

“Drivers just don’t care,” he said. “They hate you, and they’d hit you in a second.”

Where the Wild Things Are

According to New York Vehicle and Traffic Law, bikes are considered traffic, and have the same right to be on the road that a car, truck, or bus does. To see if that’s true, I decided to bike across Manhattan and into Brooklyn two weeks ago.

Some say that New York City is a jungle, and if that’s the case, being a cyclist on a busy street makes you feel like a gnat surrounded by panthers and elephants. Biking east on Houston Street, there’s no bike lane. Cars whizzed by, often cutting me off and coming within inches of hitting me.. Drivers shouted at me and others for taking up “their” road, yelling at us to get on the sidewalk.

It’s not surprising—two of the top ten most dangerous intersections in the city for cyclists are on Houston. The intersection of Bowery and West Houston Streets is the deadliest one in the city, according to the group Transportation Alternatives. There were 29 serious collisions between cyclists and motorists there between 1995 and 2005, one of which killed a cyclist.

As I approached Bowery Street, I tried to keep an eye out for any erratic cars. Just after passing through the intersection, a massive, white delivery truck covered in Asian characters swerved in front of me and slammed to a stop. I could either veer into the parked cars to the right or the rushing traffic to my left. I chose the latter, and was nearly hit by a woman in a blue sedan.

“What the hell are you doing?” one woman shouted at me after skidding to a stop. “You’re not in fucking Europe.”

Keith Goldstein, a 51-year-old photographer who has been biking around the city for 20 years, wasn’t surprised at the way drivers treated me.
In September, a friend of Goldstein’s, Jonathan Millstein, was struck by a school bus and killed while biking near Prospect Park, not far from where Toulouse was killed. After both deaths, the public cried out for more protections for cyclers.

“They think of us as being a nuisance,” he said. “If we’re impeding their progress by a millisecond, that’s too much for them. People tend to look at bicycles as toys instead of legitimate modes of transportation.”

Keith knows this attitude well. He’s been hit by motorists six times. After the last time, three years ago, he needed knee surgery and still feels “niggly little pains” in his leg.

Help!

The city isn’t unaware of the animosity between cyclists and drivers. In 2006 the city joined forces with bicycle advocacy groups to start the LOOK campaign, a series of posters and public service messages aimed at teaching both cyclists and driver safer road-sharing strategies in order to stop collisions. But advocacy groups have also been pushing for a greater integration of bike safety issues into driver training courses.

Rich Conroy runs Bike New York’s education programs, and runs a workshop that teaches driver’s ed instructors how to include in their lesson plans techniques that help drivers share the roads with cyclists. But, he said, few instructors in New York State’s decentralized and privatized driver’s ed programs want to learn teach what the state doesn’t tell them to.

“Because they already have a set curriculum packed into a certain number of hours, they aren’t going to put [bike education] in unless the state mandates it,” he said. “We tried to reach out to a local college that trains them. They didn’t return our calls, and when they finally did, they don’t think it’s important.”

Jennifer Clunie, of the New York Bicycling Coalition, a statewide non-profit advocacy group, has had better luck, and her organization has formed a partnership with the American Automobile Association, training their instructors. Currently, one of the most important things both she and Conroy want drivers to know is know is that they should keep a three foot minimum distance from cyclists at all time, especially while passing. The state’s driver education manual suggests a five food distance, but that’s not enforced.

“Stretch out your arm from your shoulder to your fingertip. That’s three feet,” said Clunie. “It’s not much, but I can testify from personal experience how dangerous and precarious a situation being so close puts a cyclist in on the road.”

Clunie’s organization has been trying to convince state legislators to make the three-foot minimum a law for three years, but hasn’t had any luck yet.

Drivers aren’t entirely to blame for the upswing in cycling collisisons. Many cyclers around the city bike erratically, running red lights, foregoing helmets and lights, and swerving in and out of traffic lanes.

“The cycling community automatically assumes that if there’s a crash, and a cyclist is killed, the motorist is automatically guilty of something,” said Bike New York’s Conroy. “Is that really the case, if the cyclist runs a red light?”

Scarselli, the bike shop manager in Brooklyn Heights, thinks that a lot of the problem has to do with this sort of bad attitude cyclists have towards drivers.

“When drivers hit, cyclists hit back,” he said. “We’re always pissed off at motorists and pedestrians, but a lot of cyclists ignore the rules of the road. It’s an endless circle.”

Divided We Bike

If drivers and cyclers can’t play nice together, then perhaps there’s another solution: split them up. Though the city has tried to give more visibility to lanes by painting them green, the common consensus among cycling advocates and the DOT is that physically separated bike lanes seem to be the best way to make biking on city streets safe.

“We need more physically protected bike lanes across the city, that’s what it’s going to take to get the average New Yorker biking,” Norvell admitted, referring to a number of projects where there is a large barrier between drivers and cyclists. “It still remains something for the intrepid.”

This year, the city tried building such a lane on Ninth Avenue between West 23rd and West 16th Streets. By essentially switching the bike lane with the parking lane, and placing small pylons between parked cars and the bike lane, the parked cars essentially act as a barrier between bikes and motor traffic. Since the lanes installation, bike accidents are down 39 percent, according to the Department of Transportation.

“You can just see the safety enhancements,” said Gastel, of the Department of Transportation, He’s enthusiastic about these separated bike lanes, and says that the department is working on more on Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Some streets are just to narrow to handle such lanes, he said.

But even physically separated bike paths can be dangerous. This is particularly at intersections, where the paths can’t help but mingle with motorists.

In 2006, Dr. Carl Nacht was biking on the West Side Bike Path, a part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, which is a 32-mile-long walking and cycle path that encircles the island of Manhattan, and is mostly separated from traffic. Even though there are signs telling drivers to yield to cyclists, he was crossing 38th Street when an NYPD tow truck driver struck him and he died in hospital.

The next morning, Paul Barenholz, a 55-year-old who lives in Tribeca, was also riding on the path. At the same spot, a car—which Barenholz believes was being driven by a tow truck driver on his way to the NYPD tow yard nearby—suddenly turned into the path, and into him.

“I skidded a few feet, hit the ground, and got a huge scrape,” he said. “Turns out, I had some nerve damage. It all happens quicker than you think.”

The driver didn’t acknowledge that anything happened, and he kept on driving into the lot. To this day, Barenholz has a weakness in his left arm, and a recurring weakness and pain in his left shoulder. He’s grateful it wasn’t worse. Luckily, Barenholz was wearing a helmet.

Back in Brooklyn Heights, Scarselli says that his shop has sold a lot more helmets than usual—likely because of increased concerns about bike safety because of the accidents in the area.

He sighed after he was reminded of the death of Alexander Toulouse.

“I don’t think an 8-year-old belongs in traffic. He belongs in the park,” Scarselli said. “But at least there are lessons to be learned. We’ve all got be safer.”

“Their fresh veggies aren’t fresh,” said Lipscomb. “The meat is more grey than red.”

That’s why Lipscomb took at job as a health educator at Health Outcomes Through Peer Education, or HOPE, a drop-in health outreach center on Hunts Point Avenue created by Urban Health Plan. One of the group’s main focuses is to promote healthy eating habits in a neighborhood that has very poor ones.

Hunts Point has long had a nutritional deficit, despite being home to the country’s largest wholesale produce market. Finding fresh fruits, vegetables, and wholes grains among the neighborhood’s many fast food restaurants and bodegas has long been a challenge. Recently, however, several community groups have had enough and are starting initiatives to provide residents with healthier options, but in a neighborhood with more fried foods than veggies, many residents are apathetic over what they eat.

Over the past few decades, more and more bastions of unhealthy eating have popped up in the area, reflecting recent investment into the once-troubled neighborhood by fast-food giants. Storefronts offering fried chicken, burgers, and pizza dominate the area’s main streets, Hunts Point Avenue and Southern Boulevard, and you’re more likely to see someone carrying a bottle of soda rather than a bottle of water while walking down than the street. As a result, heart disease is a leading cause of death and hospitalization, a quarter of residents are obese, and the area has nearly double the diabetes rates compared to the rest of the city, according to the city’s community health report.

“Obesity is a very, very big problem in Hunts Point,” said Santana. “Some people come in here wanting to lose weight. The problem is access and affordability,” said Santana.

The lone healthy option is Pico’s Juice Bar, which offers juices and smoothies made from fresh fruits and vegetables. Pico’s is also the only place in the area that Ruth Santana, the coordinator of Project HOPE, says she will buy lunch.

But apathy is also a huge problem. While working at her storefront office, Ruth Santana often glances towards the window, hoping to see someone she recognizes walking by. Santana believes that if she doesn’t grab people from off the street, they won’t come in.

“I know that guy!” Santana shouted out on Tuesday as she bounded out the door. She began to tell the man about healthy eating choices, the dangers of too much sugar, and about the workshops her organization is running on to combat obesity. The man walked away, promising to come back.

Convincing residents to come to their healthy eating workshops, aimed at both adults and children, has been an uphill battle for HOPE, which also runs asthma and HIV-related education programs. The sessions, which utilize visual aids such as yellow gelatinous mounds representing pounds of fat and bottles a quarter-full of sugar showing the amount of it in the typical soda, have been effective—for those that have attended them.

“People are surprised and go ‘Oh! Wow!’” said Santana about people’s reaction to the visual aids. “Are they buying less soda? Hopefully. We have some families that stop buying it. But everyone who participates has the info to make a better choice.”

Still, making decisions about eating healthier food is a lot easier when there’s a Whole Foods around the corner. Associated Grocery Store, the only grocery store in Hunts Point proper, is certainly no Whole Foods. It has a produce section that’s about as big as its soda section. Fine Fare, on nearby East 163rd Street in Longwood, offers a greater variety of produce, but also has a huge shelf in its butcher section devoted to breaded and battered meat. This is the kind of lax grocery store standards that upsets Lipscomb.

“Even when I didn’t have my car, I’d get in a cab and go somewhere else to shop,” he said. “Some people ain’t so lucky.”

On Tuesday, Associated Grocery’s produce section was chock-full of browning bananas, severely wrinkled grape tomatoes, a few expired bags of lettuce, and bags of carrots that were rotting and black at both ends. Most shoppers skipped past the rotting veggies and checked out with boxes and cans of processed foods. One woman said she just didn’t care about vegetables, and pushed her cart toward the frozen food section.

The store’s staff doesn’t seem to notice any problem with the produce.

“People here are just looking for rice, fruits like plantains, and juice,” said Alex Felix, a neighborhood resident who works at Associated. “People around here all come to this supermarket, we always have fresh merchandise.”

When shown the subpar fruits and veggies, Felix swore that they’d be removed from the shelf and replaced that day, but that some of the rotted produce still sold.

“Some people buy rotten bananas and stuff,” he said. “We put it at a lower price, some people can’t afford it otherwise.”

The affordability of fresh and healthy food is a huge obstacle in a neighborhood that’s wracked with poverty, but one that some are trying to obliterate. Last month, Heather Mills, the model and ex-wife of Paul McCartney, donated $1 million of vegan food to Hunts Point, some of which was given away for free as plant-based meatless patties at a recent community barbecue, where most people just thought they were eating regular meat

The rest of it is going to be given away by the Hunts Point Alliance for Children, which is hoping to distribute both veggie-based fake meat and fresh produce on Mills’ dollar through multiple venues, including local community groups such as HOPE, at neighborhood schools, and by setting up “healthy cafés.” The group is still trying to pin down a produce provider from the Hunts Point Market, which has largely ignored the neighborhood’s dearth of fresh food.

“We’re working with what the community wants, and what’s most beneficial to them,” said Jill Roche, an HPAC director working on the project.

Even The Point, the popular arts-based community center, is hopping on the fresh food bandwagon. The center is hosting Kelston Bascom, a local chef, who is setting up his own healthy café in its kitchen.

But free healthy food may not be enough to change long-ingrained unhealthy habits said Chanel Reid, who has lived in the area since the summer and has spent a lot of time here before then.
“I’d definitely try it,” she said of Mills’ vegan food. “Free is a wonderful word. But people are afraid of change. They don’t actually realize what they’re doing. People here are to negative and pessimistic to give healthier food a chance.”

Reid was one of ten people on HOPE’s weekly healthy eating walk, led on Thursday by Lipscomb, who brought participants to the bi-weekly farmers market that runs in Raul Del Valle Square, across the Bruckner Expressway, in nearby Longwood. Lipscomb discussed healthy eating habits with the walkers—all women, some with children—and then gave each of them a few two dollar “health bucks” to spend at the market.

Damaris Lopez, 33, who has lived in Hunts Point all her life, was on the walk with two of her three children.

“The only healthy food is at the farmer’s market,” she said. “We need healthy food for our children.”

After about twenty minutes of browsing and buying at the market, Lipscomb rounded up the participants so they could go back to HOPE and sign up for workshops.

Only two of the original ten ended up back with him—a sign of the neighborhood’s indifference and HOPE’s continuing challenge.

“Do not lose these goals. Get to know them,” she said. “We are going to work, day in, and day out on each and every one of these goals, so that everyone achieves them.”

The pieces of paper are a cornerstone of PS 48’s educational strategy. At the beginning of the year, after an assessment by their teacher and conferencing with the child, teachers assign two specific goals to each of the school’s students: one for Math and one for English. Each goal is tailored to the student, encouraging them to strive to better their own skills, not merely to improve scores on a test.
“The goal cards were developed last year,” said Fornabaio. Everything is broken down and analyzed student by student to get their individual goals.”

Embracing a motto that calls their school “the Best School in the Universe,” teachers and administrators at PS 48 in Hunts Point have managed to transform a once-struggling school of over 1,000 students into a beacon of education in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Unlike many schools that teach to standardized tests, teachers at PS 48 are encouraged to implement a different philosophy: education and student engagement comes first, test-taking comes second.

Paradoxically, test scores are up. In fact, the school’s reform efforts caused the school’s grade on the Department of Education’s citywide progress report to jump from a C in the 2006/2007 school year to an A for the 2007/2008 school year.

PS 48 began its turnaround in 2001, with the arrival of a new principal, John Hughes. Hughes transformed it from a school of children asleep in class, sitting at desks in rows, and taught by clock-watching teachers into an offbeat school full of passionate teachers and enthusiastic students.

Judy Friedman has experienced the school’s transformation firsthand. She’s a veteran educator who’s been at the school for 13 years, and has been an assistant principal for four.

“With a lot of work, and a lot of change in administration, we’ve really managed to put our scores through the roof. We’ve made continuous progress since the time that I’ve been here,” she said.

According to Friedman, much of the school’s recent performance is due to a discriminating hiring policy that includes recruiting teachers from Teach for America and from other teaching fellowship programs.

“The administration really hand-picks the staff,” she said. We don’t go to the open market. So the staff are dedicated. They even—voluntarily—come to unpaid professional training.”

Some teachers, such as Fornabaio, are so dedicated that they will sometimes buy food and clothing for students, many of whom come from very poor families,.

The school’s teachers reflect its hiring policy. They are independent-minded and seem to be in ideological opposition to the tests-first attitude of No Child Left Behind.

“When you teach to the test, you’re doing coverage, you’re not teaching,” said Cheryl DeLeaver, a social studies teacher with a blunt demeanor, clothed in colorful African dress. “And the covering you’re doing is covering the teacher’s ass. You’re not doing anything for the child.”

DeLeaver, who has been with the school since 2003, teaches using a method of teaching called Universe Backwards Design, a system by which she teaches her material and then goes back later to point out what sort of information from her original lesson might be on a test, instead of only teaching only facts that will be on the test. She says the approach lets her student know when she’s teaching them as opposed to simply reviewing material for an upcoming test.

“The test review is not teaching,” she said. “I want the children to know that there’s a difference—that’s how I do it.”

Friedman, who has taken up greater administrative duties since Hughes left the school last year, is also not a great fan of tests, but sees them as a measure of accountability, a sort of necessary evil to make sure students are doing well, not as a purpose in an of themselves.
“We try to make it as fun as possible, we try to make games out of it,” she said. “It helps to make it seem like a necessary life lesson.

Despite the stark increase in academic performance, the school still has its own problems. The school’s environment category on the Department of Education’s progress report is still mired in mediocrity, having received a C. The grade is based on surveys given to parents and teachers.

While staff and administrators say they can’t explain this, one particularly low score in the environment category stands out: communication.
Heather Arabadjis, a second-grade teacher who’s been at the school for six years, says the neighborhood’s high proportion of families who speak only Spanish has a lot to do with the low communication scores.

“Most of the teachers here speak English. Explaining homework and how we teach things is difficult,” she said. “The parents have to help them with their homework, but they’re not sure how to do that. That’s the biggest challenge.”

Christine Pizarro, the school’s parent coordinator, said she often has to act as translator when parents and teachers meet.
“Parents can’t communicate with the teachers the way they want to communicate,” she said. “That’s where I come in.”

As a solution, this year Pizarro has organized a free, after-school English training class for parents, making PS 48 a school where entire families come to learn.

DeLeaver, the outspoken social studies teacher, said that she tries to teach to whole families, aiming education at their weaknesses in the same way the educational goals card target a student’s.

“It’s not about test. I teach from the perspective of where the families are at,” she said. “The child is one of the tools of educating the entire family. You’re not just teaching the child to read, you’re teaching an entire family to read.”

Rebecca Mikulasovich, an expert in forensic biology with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner testified in the murder trial of 30-year-old Antonio Bruno of Bushwick. She described the process by which her team of forensics scientists tested samples swabbed from the knife. A swab of the handle taken by the NYPD at the scene of the crime contained the DNA of both Bruno and William Rosario, the deceased.

A second swab, taken after Mikulasovich’s team received the knife, was inconclusive, she said.
“The NYPD’s swab tested negative for blood, but positive for other biological material, which could be tissue or skin cells from a hand,” she said. “William Rosario and Antonio Bruno contributed to a mixture of DNA on the handle.”

Bruno faces charges of second degree murder, first degree manslaughter, and fourth degree criminal possession of a weapon, all related to the stabbing death of Rosario on November 12 last year. According to court files, the incident occurred during a heated argument between the two men in front of 298 12th St. in Bushwick. Rosario was 26 when he died.

In morning session one other forensic expert from Mikulasovich’s team who had inspected the knife confirmed that DNA of both men was on it.

Forensic expert Melissa Smith, , said clothing worn by the men that was inspected at the scene came up with inconclusive results, except for Rosario’s jacket, which was stained with his own blood.

The defense does not deny that Bruno stabbed Rosario, but the specific circumstances surrounding the stabbing is at issue in the case.

The prosecution, led by Assistant District Attorney Samantha Magnani, has spent the lengthy trial, which has lasted nearly a year attempting to convince the jury that Bruno was the aggressor.

According to documents outlining prosecution’s version of events, Rosario was on his way home from a bowling alley with two of his children and some friends when he encountered Bruno, who got into an argument then threatened and attacked Rosario with the knife. Rosario’s family has corroborated these versions of events.

Ivan Vogel, Bruno’s defense attorney, said he didn’t think the DNA evidence presented yesterday helped the prosecution’s case.

“DNA evidence is all about whodunit,” he said. “We’re not denying the stabbing of a person, but it was done in self-defense. If he didn’t defend himself, he would have ended up dead.”

Vogel said there is evidence that Rosario and his friends were armed on the night in question.

“They were looking to cause serious injury to my client,,” he said, adding added that Rosario had escalated the initial argument, that his client tried backing away from Rosario and his friends, and that Rosario had both alcohol and angel dust in his system when he died.

He said that the two men did not know each other prior to the incident.

Vogel, whose short defense lasted only an afternoon called only one witness to bolster his version of the incident, Detective Alfredo Hidalgo of the NYPD’s 72nd precinct.

Hidalgo testified that while he was investigating the case, he interviewed an eyewitness named Ben Smith, who said that Rosario and two friends had bottles in heir hands. Vogel said that he will argued that these bottles were used as aggressive weapons.

Both sides of the trial will give their summations today.

Nowadays, Ortega, a Mexican immigrant who arrived in New York in the eighties, makes his own sauces—and dishes—at Real Azteca, an often-teeming restaurant on East 163rd Street in Hunts Point that he started nearly decade ago with his brothers, Carlos and Javier.

“I don’t like the food of other restaurants,” said Ortega. “I make the Mexican meal, the same as my mom.”

Real Azteca Restaurant serves sumptuous Mexican dishes to a diverse clientele.

Ortega’s story is common in this South Bronx neighborhood. Mexican immigrants, once a rare sight in Puerto Rican-dominated Hunts Point, are on the rise in the area. As more Mexicans moved into the community in the past decade, they’ve demanded their own food, and entrepreneurs like Ortega responded by opening traditional Mexican restaurants. Today, eateries like Real Azteca and Pedro Food provide a rallying point for the Mexican community and its culture. But the restaurants also serve up an effective way to help improve relations with other ethnic groups in the neighborhood.

Real Azteca has become so popular that earlier this year it expanded into the building next door, opening a large dining room. The restaurant’s Mexican staples such as traditional, stacked plates of non-folded tacos and massive, bulging, sauced-covered burritos appeal to residents.

“It ain’t Taco Bell, but it’s damned good,” said James Small, an African-American on his way out of the restaurant, steaming gordita in hand.

Ortega’s guiding principle is that his food should be simple and real. It’s also cheap—a concern for his customers, as the area is one of the city’s poorest. Many items on the menu are under $3, and customers can get an incredibly filling lunch for $5.

Ortega, a bearded man clad in a simple white t-shirt and a stained apron, runs a family business. He cooks meals with his sister, Inasia, and most of his employees are relatives. Even his teenage niece, Deshika, works as a waitress.

“Everybody comes here,” she said. “Mexicans. Puerto Ricans, Americans. Everybody.”

She frequently brings friends of all backgrounds to eat, where they often shout energetically above the loud Mexican pop pouring out of a large jukebox that sits against the wall.

Not far away, Teodora Aguilar, another Mexican immigrant who came here decades before Ortega, runs her own family business, San Marcos Distributors on Westchester Avenue. A combined Mexican food store and restaurant opened in 2001, it gives the Mexican community a taste of home.

“A lot of Mexican people look for authentic Mexican products,” said Aguilar, translated by her daughter. Joanna. “They couldn’t find them anywhere else, so they came here.” Three generations of this immigrant family often meet in San Marcos. Aguilar, who came to this county 29 years ago, frequently works with her daughter. Joanna Aguilar’s toddler daughter, Shayna, frequently climbs up on the counter, eager to do her part.

But it’s not just a special place for one family. San Marcos has become something of an unofficial Mexican community center. “People come here. They meet each other and make a community,” said Aguilar. “A lot of people look out for each other now.”

Over 10 years ago, the Mexican community here was smaller and less cohesive, Aguilar recalled. Mexican residents were frequently robbery victims, due to the perception among non-Mexicans that they were mostly illegal immigrants, and wouldn’t report crimes to police, she said.

She said that robberies are down, but since she opened her store, two break-ins have occurred late at night—when the newly built community isn’t around to protect it. While crime statistics confirm that robberies are down in the neighborhood’s 41st Precinct, the area around San Marcos does have a higher proportion of incidents, police said.

However, these tense relations between Mexicans and non-Mexicans are dissolving, and as they do, so do barriers between foods. Celino Linares, a Mexican cook who moved to the neighborhood twenty years ago, opened up Celeste Diner in the neighborhood’s industrial area south shortly after arriving.

With both an American and a Mexican menu, workers and truckers from the nearby Hunts Point Cooperative Market loved Celeste, and some even adventurously tried some of Linares’ traditional cooking.

However, after controversially letting the Teamsters advertise at his restaurant during their attempt to unionize workers at Baldor Specialty Food earlier this year, Linares, who simply thought he was selling ad space and didn’t choose a side in the conflict, lost most of his business when Baldor discouraged employees from eating at Celeste. As a result, he couldn’t renew his lease and was forced to sell the building.

He was offered at job at nearby Pedro Food, where he spiced up owner Lydia Lasuell’s Dominican-heavy menu with his own American and Mexican fare. With his creative mixing of culinary traditions, Linares has helped bring in a more diverse crowd.

“We try to make it better together,” said Linares. “People are happy. They can eat what they like.”

“Pedro de Best Food In The World,” as the restaurant’s sign declares and as locals know it, has become a hit with Spanish-speakers and English-speakers alike. Open from 4 a.m. until 5 p.m., the restaurant is frequently crowded with both workers and residents of all backgrounds enjoying hearty Mexican goat stews and sizzling Dominican bean soups, in a fusion of food that has shattered the traditional ethnic divisions in the neighborhood. Traditionalists can still even order a cheeseburger, though it lacks the march of spices of the Linares’ unusual union of Hispanic cultural dishes.

Well-liked Mexican culinary staples aren’t just for the Mexican community anymore, as a mosaic of lunch-goers at Pedro attested to while chewing pieces of tender roast goat.

Later, at Real Azteca, Ortega was putting on a fresh apron and getting ready for the lunch rush. He pointed a thick finger at a family by the window feasting on quesadillas that oozed with cheese and homemade salsa.

“Those are Puerto Ricans eating here,” he said. “See? Everybody likes Mexican food.”

Jamel Wisdom, a 19-year-old who lived on nearby Ocean Avenue, was declared dead shortly after police and ambulances arrived, police said.

According to Ellen Borakave, a representative from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Wisdom died of multiple gunshot wounds to the head, torso, and right arm.

“When I see that one go in the ambulance, he wasn’t doing nothing,” said the superintendent of a nearby building who declined to give his name. “He was just white.”

The injured man, a 19-year-old that police have yet to publicly identify, was taken to nearby Kings College Hospital, where he is recovering from a gunshot wound to the leg, and is in stable condition, police said.

The altercation began last night between two groups of youths, thought to be in their late teens or early twenties, outside of an apartment building at 68 E. 19th St., police said. Police confirmed that both groups knew each other.

Just before 11:00 p.m., Wisdom and at least two other youths ran into the building’s lobby, where Wisdom and one other victim were shot, police said.

The building’s superintendent, Carlos Ayala was eating dinner with his family when he heard several gunshots. He said that there was a group of about eight people outside of his building at that time.

“Some guy is shooting in the lobby, he kills people,” he said. “All the time, it’s in the street. This time, it’s in the building.”

Some eyewitnesses, who refused to give their names out of fear that the gunman would attack them, said they saw a man with a gunshot wound in the knee run around the corner shortly after the gunshots.

Police and ambulances arrived shortly thereafter, responding to a quick 911 call, while residents quickly streamed outside to watch the commotion, police and Ayala said.

A 22-year-old man who declined to give his name knew the injured victim but only identified him by his street nickname, “Geddy.”

The altercation was caught on the lobby’s video cameras, Ayala said, and South Brooklyn detectives were on the scene reviewing the tapes and looking for possible eyewitnesses Tuesday morning.

A handful of uniformed police also stood outside of the building, garnering glares from passing residents. Residents and witnesses were reluctant to give details to reporters.

While few residents spoke to police and reporters, friends of Wisdom quickly made a heartfelt online memorial for him on MySpace. The mournful page contains pictures of Wisdom and identifies his by his street name, “Smooth.”

Police said that there have been several shootings in the area recently, including one on nearby Parade Place.

As of Tuesday night, police said that no arrests had been made and that the investigation is ongoing.