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Police search Bayside for grand larceny suspect after crash injured officers

Police search Bayside for grand larceny suspect after crash injured officers
By Connor Adams Sheets

Police officers combed Bayside streets, highways and wooded areas for more than two hours Wednesday evening in search of at least one man wanted in connection with a grand larceny.

A police helicopter, search dog, Emergency Service Unit trucks and a wide assortment of undercover and uniformed officers and their various vehicles descended on the area around the Adria Hotel at Northern Boulevard and 221st Street, where the man or men on the run fled from, according to witnesses.

Police were still searching for at least one man at 5:45 p.m. Wednesday night, according to the Breaking News Network. Another man was arrested shortly after their vehicle crashed into an undercover police car, said Dix Hills, L.I., resident Adam Teitelbaum. Four police officers were injured, none critically, in the incident, according to Breaking News Network.

The incident took place near the 111th Precinct, which is on Northern Boulevard and 215th Street.

Teitelbaum said he was driving on 221st when a police officer gestured for him to get out of the way of the undercover car – a black Chevrolet Impala – which he said turned off Northern up 221st, where a green Dodge Grand Caravan with two large stickers depicting bald eagles and “USA” on its rear had just left the hotel’s parking lot and was attempting a getaway.

“The van was coming out of the parking lot, trying to get out on the street. It seems like he was caught red-handed doing something. Dude, it’s just hectic. I’ve never seen a deployment of police resources to this level,” Teitelbaum said. “I was just looking at apartments in Bayside and all of a sudden I was almost T-boned by a green van.”

The car’s rear left side and the van’s entire left side crashed into one another and slid, and one man was removed from the van and taken into police custody, according to Bayside resident Tom, who declined to give his last name but said he was taking his granddaughter to tutoring class across the street when he saw the incident take place.

“This van was coming down 221st Street, so the two police cars were making a left turn off Northern and they put him right up on the corner. He was trying to leave and the cops blocked him in and he hit one of the cop cars,” he said.

Cynthia Radalj lives in an apartment directly behind the Adria Hotel’s raised parking lot. She said the lot has been a problem before.

“There’s people hanging out there at 3 in the morning, shifty, doing things. I don’t know what they’re doing but they’re there late at night, I can hear them from my window,” she said. “I’ve called the cops when kids are messing around up here and they don’t even show up, so this must be something crazy.”

Reach reporter Connor Adams Sheets by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 718-260-4538.