Brooklyn resident Dwight McPherson has been identified as the employee at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center responsible for the extraction of tens of thousands of patients' ID information. McPherson said he was approached by an Atlanta-based ID-theft ring and sold his first batch of 1,000 names, phone numbers, and social security numbers for $750. The hassle of having one's credit ruined and identity stolen apparently has a street value of 75 cents. McPherson's lawyer......

The police have released a sketch of the suspect who attacked and robbed a man of $149,000 in cash on West 56th Street on Friday. The incident, which occurred around 2PM, scared Midtown pedestrians as a shot was fired. But in spite of the number of witnesses, the suspect got away. The victim, 50-year-old Seton Ijams, had withdrawn the money from a Chase bank on Sixth Avenue and West 56th Street. According to the Daily......

A 30-year-old man lost his life last night after locking himself out of his apartment. Sometime between 8:15 p.m. and 8:40 p.m., Paul Reilly fell five stories, landing on his back in the courtyard behind the building where he lived on 65th St. and 1st Ave. in Manhattan. Reilly, who had apparently gained entrance to the building but was locked out of his apartment, attempted to climb out a hallway window, over to a window......

There's trouble brewin' at everyones favorite chain coffee shop. WCBS is reporting that there has been a shooting at a midtown Starbucks. The BNN confirms with a location: 120 W 56th Street, and reports a possible robbery as well. The NYPD are currently still looking for the suspect. UPDATE: The shooting took place outside of the Starbucks and WNBC is reporting that the NYPD, based on preliminary information, believes the incident was part of a......

A psychologist was slashed to death in her office building at 79th Street and York last night. Another therapist was seriously injured; the suspect is still at large. Police believe that Dr. Kathryn Faughey was killed by a patient during a 9PM session. Dr. Kent Shinback, a colleague in the same practice, ran into Faughey's office when he heard her screaming and tried to stop the patient, but he was, per the Daily News, "slashed......

The Thursday night fire in a Bedford-Stuyvsant brownstone that left a 3-year-old child in critical condition seems to have been caused by her playing with a butane lighter. There is also a tragic coincidence: In 1992, an apartment fire claimed the life of a 1-year-old sister. Gabriela Rogers, known as "Gabi," who suffered burns on 70-75% of her body, is still at New York Prebyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She and another young sister Camilila......

When fighting a fire in Bedford-Stuyvesant, firefighter saved a three-year-old girl who was left alone in a house on Stuyvesant Avenue. The FDNY responded at 7:23PM and heard the girl's cries coming from the rear of the house. An FDNY spokesman explained to the NY Times, "The fire was between them and the girl. Normally they would pull the door to the fire room closed, but there was no door to pull closed, so they......

The two men who fell more than 40 stories, when the window washing rig they had just stepped onto collapsed, were brothers. Edgar and Alcides Moreno were Ecuadorians who had come to the U.S. and lived in Linden, NJ. They worked for City Wide Window Cleaning and were regular fixtures at the Solow Tower Apartments building on East 66th St. The brothers were just starting work yesterday morning when they may have stepped on to......

An Upper East Side lingerie shop was robbed yesterday by a man posing as a vacuum cleaner salesman. In what the New York Post describes as a "Panty Raid," a black man in his 40s or 50s was let into Lingerie & Company on 3rd Ave. and 71st St., where he bound the 77-year-old clerk in the back room and robbed the store of cash and merchandise. The Daily News writes that the "Park Ave.......

The health scare of the season continued this week with news of an outbreak of the methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) "superbug" at an Upper East Side hospital's children's ward. The New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center said that nine infants were infected with the drug-resistant strain of bacteria that killed a New York 7th Grader last month. Omar Rivera Jr. was felled by the staph infection on October 14th after being misdiagnosed at Kings County......

Mayor David Dinkins, who preceded Mayor Giuliani in office from 1990 to 1993, had his appendix removed in an emergency surgery Friday when it was determined that he was suffering from appendicitis. Dinkins was actually visiting his doctor for a routine flu shot, when he complained that he had a sharp pain in his side. A CAT scan revealed the inflamed and infected appendix--a condition that can be lethal if the vestigial organ bursts. Dinkins......

The red tow truck sitting in a crater at 41st Street and Lexington Avenue, right where an 83-year-old steam pipe exploded Wednesday evening, will be towed out today. The Daily News reports that Con Ed is preparing to remove the truck, and because there are live electrical cables in the hole, the "crews may use nylon wire, which won't act as a conductor, to hoist the vehicle from the pit." After the truck is......

The city continued clean-up at the site of Wednesday's Midtown steam pipe explosion at East 41st and Lexington Avenue. Vanderbilt Avenue has been reopened, and Third Avenue was scheduled to be reopened today. Clean up of 42nd Street between Third and Park should be done by Monday, while clean up of Lexington between 42nd and 43rd should be done by the end of the weekend. Here's what the city said about the asbestos samples:The......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A partial collapse at a building on 39th and 9th Avenue in Manhattan, a pedestrian struck at West Moshulu Parkway South and Jerome in the Bronx, and a boat in distress under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge Philanthropists, including former Citibank head Sandy Weill, donated $400 million to Weill Cornell Medical College to go towards new research programs, new facilities, support for students and education and more; Weill's overall contributions......

Everyone is still wondering how a woman fell through a sidewalk grate and into a electrical power vault on West 51st Street yesterday morning. The Daily News reports the victim, 26-year-old Jessica Hinksmon, could have been electrocuted by the 13,000 volts of electricity from the transformer. Hinksmon cried for help before firefighters used a "confined space stretcher and tripod" to lift her out. One of the firefighters who rescued Hinksmon, Lit. Tom Donnelly of......

The sad truth of being a pedestrian in New York City is that pedestrians have be on the defensive. On Sunday night, 23-year-old Sabina Paradi was crossing 37th Street at Ninth Avenue when a truck making a left turn hit her. The driver was "cited for failure to yield right of way," which means that the driver didn't stop for pedestrians. Paradi suffered critical head injuries, and her father Bodo Paradi told the Post, "We're......

A man was shocked after touching high voltage wires over a NJ Transit train parked inside Penn Station. The man had tried opening the train's doors, but when he couldn't, he climbed on top of the train. Authorities suspect the man may be homeless and was trying to get into the train to sleep. An Amtrak employee found the man, who was taken to New York-Weill Cornell Hospital for third-degree burns. Roofs of trains are......

Hoorah! Leo, the snow leopard found abandoned in Pakistan, is now officially in the public eye at the Bronx Zoo. Last month, the State Department touted a very special arrangement with the Pakistani government, which allowed the 14 month old snow leopard to be sent to the Bronx Zoo temporarily, because Pakistan does not have snow leopard facilities. (Leo could not be relased into the wild because he never learned survival skills - he......

Yesterday morning's car accident involving a man suspected of stabbing someone in Rhode Island is profoundly crazy. Joel Noonan was trying to drive away from MTA police on Lexington Avenue when his Jeep Cherokee crashed into Nissan Pathfinder near 63rd Street, hitting pedestrians, with the Pathfinder ultimately crashing into a travel office window. One woman, Eve Maria Boisbel, was hit so hard that she, as Newsday reports, was "wedged inside a black metal garbage can......

A city bus hit one of two brothers who were playing around while on their way to school. Thirteen year old Bernard Caraballo and his 11 year old brother Angel thought they saw a city bus arriving, so they headed to Rockaway Boulevard in Queens. The bus ended up being off-duty, so while waiting at a median near 145th Street for the light to change, according to witnesses, they started to horse around. Thomas Calderon......

Authorities found a hose that was attached from a gas line to the area where a home once stood at 34 East 62nd Street, making them believe that the line had been tampered. The building's owner, Dr. Nicholas Bartha, who claimed he would blow up the building in an email, is still at Weill Cornell Medical Center with third degree burns after being found in his building's rubble on Monday. Bartha had been in......

As the weather gets better, we see more and more people jogging, bicycling, and rollerblading through the City streets. And when we see these same people coupled with an iPod, we just cringe and hope that Rocky soundtrack doesn’t distract from the yellow cab bearing down on them. But as it turns out, street athletes might want to be more careful with what comes out of the cab rather than the cab itself. Despite the......

2006 does not seem to be a good year for Hansom Cabs. First there was that nasty accident that put a driver into a coma and led to a horse being put down, then came the ASPCA's very vocal push to get the 175 working hansom cabs out of the city entirely. Not to mention the recent push by the City Council to limit the cabs to only Central Park. Add to that list......

This morning, Irene Sinyavin is our hero. She just gave birth to her 11 pound, 10 ounce baby boy - naturally. And without pain medication. Sinyavin is 5'9" and her husband is 6'4", but you might not expect an a baby over 11 pounds. Weill Cornell Medical Center thinks it's the biggest baby ever delivered there, and from the picture in the Daily News, baby Alexei seems to have totally skipped that scrunched-up, old man......

Worrying about being hit by a car while walking is one thing, and worrying about being hit by a drunk driver is another. Diana Tafur was ejected from a minivan taxi when it was hit by drunk driver in a BMW. The BMW driver, Harzem Sendogan, ran a red light on East 84th Street at First Avenue, and Tafur was "ejected from her seat in the back of the van through a side window and......

Last night, a dramatic fireball outside a building at Mercer and Houston exploded five stories, but luckily no one was seriously hurt, save one pedestrian whose head was scorched. The transformer was located in a metal grate outside 172-174 Mercer, and Con Ed thinks the fire was caused by a power cable burning out. A witness told the NY Post, "A great big fireball from underground just lit up the whole side of the building.......