SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

(THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED HERE: Sheepshead Bay Sex Assault Suspect Fires At Cops, Sparking Five-Hour Pursuit)

There is currently heavy police activity in Sheepshead Bay, near Emmons Avenue and East 14th Street.

A helicopter circles above the Belt Parkway, expanding and contracting its search as police vehicles roam the streets at least as far north as Avenue Y.

We’ve received messages from readers with conflicting accounts. We are working on discovering the details, but here’s how one tipster described it:

Sunday 11:35 pm: Five squad cars and at least one unmarked suv patrolling east 14th &15th … Pedestrians of a young male description were being stopped on emmons according to several young neighbors returning from the store. Foot patrols of 4 and 6 officers walked East 15th and checked alleys and vacant lots. NYPD Helicopter was brought in to circle overhead. Entire brigade moved off towards Coney Island Avenue around 11:50 pm although what seemed to be more than one helicopter continued to sweep the neighborhood until after midnight.

UPDATE: A Facebook reader points us to these alerts on Twitter, from: @AlwaysAction. However, it says West 12th Street, and we haven’t yet verified a connection:

Screenshot taken 12:10 a.m.

This is a breaking news story and may contain inaccuracies. We will update it as more information becomes available. If anyone has more information or additional photos, please send them to tips (at) sheepsheadbites (dot) com.

The following is a message from the New York City Department of Transportation:

A tractor trailer illegally traveling eastbound on the Belt Parkway struck the subway overpass at East 14th Street, tearing open its haul and causing an SUV behind it to slam into its rear.

The driver of the SUV escaped injury, though the vehicle’s front was crushed. The accident, which occurred just before 9:30 a.m., caused severe delays on the Belt Parkway as authorities shut down all lanes of traffic.

Authorities removed the cargo from the tractor trailer to get it under the overpass. A fire truck hooked its front to the tractor trailer’s load and dragged it off the highway to the Shore Parkway service road, between East 15th Street and Sheepshead Bay Road, which authorities closed to traffic. The highway was reopened just after 10:00 a.m. as a tow truck carried the crushed SUV to the service road as well.

Tractor trailers, like all commercial vehicles, are not permitted on the Belt Parkway.

“I know that. I know,” the driver told Sheepshead Bites when asked if he knew about the restriction. “My boss told me to go on 27. I thought it was closed … so just a little bit.”

The truck driver faces a summons for the violation.

As of this writing, tow truck operators, police and Department of Transportation officials are still on the scene. The tractor trailer’s cargo, was loaded onto a flatbed truck for removal, leaving scratches in the asphalt from where it was dragged.

The overpass had no notable damage, a police officer on the scene told Sheepshead Bites.

FDNY trucks pull the tractor-trailer's load from the highway to the service road, dragging it over the divider. (Photo by Diana R.)

Photo by nolastname.

A writer for the New York Times’ reader contributed blog Metropolitan Diaries submitted a post that I think many of us can empathize with: “Dear Belt Parkway, A Brooklyn Tale of Woe.”

The piece dances around the daily frustrations of the Belt Parkway, personifying the Department of Transportation as a contemptible Puck figure taunting us along our Midsummer Traffic Nightmare.

Nancy Katt writes:

I despise you, Belt Parkway. You are just miles and miles of miserable tie-ups, never-ending construction, and gut-wrenching “signs” (both literal and figurative), that are, to put it mildly, less than truthful.

For instance, why do you welcome me to Brooklyn, Belt Parkway, with a “How Sweet It Is!”, when you really mean “What you lookin’ at?”

Ugh, those signs. And the construction, of course, isn’t spared the writer’s barbs:

Why, Belt Parkway, do you proclaim “Men at Work: Fixing Bridge Pylons,” when you actually mean, “Men fixing to work, watching bridge pile-ons”?

I’m a little confused by her dig at our neighborhood’s name. She should definitely come and try some of the lamb from some of our Turkish and Uzbeki restaurants. But, I couldn’t agree more with her assessment of the Belt Parkway’s terminus:

Why, when I pass Knapp Street, am I suddenly sleepy? And, why, when I pass Sheepshead Bay, am I imagining an inlet of lamb stew?

And, nearing the end, why do you finally, across the Verrazano Bridge, lead to Victory Boulevard, when, in fact, all I feel is a crushing sense of defeat?

What do you think of the Belt Parkway? Is Katt too nasty, too nice, or right on the mark?

The following is a notice from the NYC Department of Transportation’s Division of Bridges, announcing planned lane closures on the Belt Parkway from May 21 through May 26:

Photo by nolastname

Attention drivers: if you thought Belt Parkway traffic couldn’t get any worse, you thought wrong!

Beginning in early April, the Department of Transportation will launch into a new round of construction necessitating periodic lane closures, this time between Coney Island Avenue and Knapp Street. The agency is undertaking planned replacements of guard rails and drainage infrastructure, according to Community Board 15 Chairperson Theresa Scavo.

The latest construction will occur alongside the ongoing seven-year renovation plan of the highway’s seven bridges and overpasses. The first phase of that $365 million project wrapped up in December, when work on the first three bridges - Paerdegat Basin, Rockaway Parkway and Fresh Creek Basin – hit the halfway mark.

The city is also in the midst of a $2.9 million component rehabilitation of the bridge over Ocean Avenue and a $5 million contract for protective coating of five spans between Bay 8th Street and East 14th Street.

The Seven Bridges Project on the Belt Parkway sure is plodding along, but we’re sure there are still plenty among you wondering why the heck such a large-scale project needed to be done.

Well, worry not. Crazeenydriver is here to explain it to you… and with a spectacular Brooklyn accent.

In Crazee’s video, Exploring The Belt Parkway Plum Beach Bridge, we see there’s still plenty of work to be done. The January 29 video focuses on the undercarriage of the bridge as well as the walkway. Throughout the slideshow video, he shows some photos of eroding metal and pavement that’s on top of the bridge, and rust that has coated parts of the bridge.

When he arrives at the bottom of the bridge, you can see that a good portion of the concrete has worn off. However, he did notice some beams that were placed under the bridge that weren’t there during his last visit a year ago.

“It’s in poor condition,” said Crazeenydriver in the video.

The $365 million contract for the Seven Bridges Project started in 2009, beginning with reconstruction three significantly deteriorated bridges on the Belt Parkway. The federal- and city-funded initiative is part of the $5 billion tab that the Bloomberg administration has picked up on bridge rehabilitation.

The project is expected to be completed by 2013.

We were in a meeting when Elina S. sent us the above photo, showing what appears to be a fire on the Belt Parkway, near the ramp for exit 8, at approximately 8:00 p.m. That means we couldn’t rush over there and find out exactly what happened. If you have any information, photos or video, please send them to tips [at] sheepsheadbites [dot] com.

Photo by Arthur Borko

The following is a press release from the Department of Transportation:

New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner (DOT) Janette Sadik-Khan today announced the completion of the first phase of a $365 million contract started in 2009 to reconstruct three significantly deteriorated bridges on the Belt Parkway, which carry 150,000 cars a day through Brooklyn and Queens to John F. Kennedy International Airport and Nassau County to the east and to the Gowanus Expressway and Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to the west. Once notorious for their rough condition, the bridges at Paerdegat Basin, Rockaway Parkway and Fresh Creek Basin are the first of seven structures undergoing complete reconstruction. Eastbound traffic this week shifted onto the first of two new parallel structures passing over the Paerdegat Basin. Westbound traffic is scheduled to shift onto the formerly eastbound span on December 28 to permit construction to begin on the parallel structure which is expected to be completed in 2013. In another contract milestone, westbound traffic was shifted onto the new bridge over Rockaway Parkway on December 5.

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We began hearing a lot of chatter about a major incident on the Belt Parkway yesterday afternoon, with rumors floating up that it was a 15-car accident. Luckily, the scale wasn’t anywhere near the size of the rumors. Unfortunately, it was a major incident.

According to the New York Post:

An elderly man was killed and his wife critically injured today when the husband drove their Toyota Camry the wrong way onto the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn and hit another car, authorities said.

The 84-year-old driver and his 82-year-old passenger entered the parkway at the Erskine Street exit ramp in East New York at around 2 p.m. and started heading westbound in the eastbound lanes, cops said.

Soon after, they collided with a black Ford sedan that was going eastbound, according to authorities.

The other driver – a 55-year-old man – is in stable condition.

The accident caused major backups along the Belt Parkway as far back as the Verrazano Bridge. The entire east-bound highway was shut down for a period yesterday, as was all but one lane west-bound.