PAGE PAGE List your apartment or house FREE EIGHT More exempt schools SIX INSIDE BROOKLYN’S WEEKLY NEWSPAPER Including The Downtown News, Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Paper and Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Paper Timesaving holiday tips Published weekly by Brooklyn Paper Publications Inc, 26 Court St., Brooklyn 11242 Phone 718-834-9350 AD fax 718-834-1713 • NEWS fax 718-834-9278 © 2003 Brooklyn Paper Publications • 14 pages including GO BROOKLYN • Vol.26, No. 15 BWN, DTG, PSG, MID • April 14, 2003 • FREE Keyspan concerts Coney stadium to host Bjork, others By Patrick Gallahue tions, which is promoting the ager of both the stadium and The Brooklyn Papers events, has said in published the Brooklyn Cyclones, which reports that he hopes to bring play their single-A season at Coney Island’s minor at least 20 concerts to Keyspan Keyspan Park from June league baseball stadium, Key- Park between mid-May and through the beginning of Sep- span Park, is getting ready to early August. tember, declined to discuss the announce some major league Bjork tickets will be on sale plans but said something is acts this summer. exclusively on her Web site, coming soon. / Tom Callan / Tom The only announced per- www.bjork.com, until April “Nothing has been finalized formance thus far is Icelandic 11, at which time they will or formalized but we hope pop diva Bjork, on Aug. 22, also be available through Tick- within the next two weeks to although Josh Young, founder etmaster. have something to announce of Brooklyn Boyz Produc- Steve Cohen, general man- See CONCERTS on page 7 The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn / Tom Callan / Tom April showers? Two weeks into spring 2003, you couldn’t blame the flowers for being a little confused. Winter wasn’t done just yet, dumping about 5 inches Gardens medic of snow on April 7, burying the emerging blooms and turning Clinton survives bullet Papers The Brooklyn Street in Cobble Hill (below) into a white-capped wonderland. By Patrick Gallahue diers, Americans and Iraqis The Brooklyn Papers alike, on the scene and told the Times, “All the stretchers Thomas Smith Jr., a 21- were full of blood. I was year-old Navy medic with shooting guys with morphine. the 1st Marine Division in Pretty much all of them had Iraq, displayed great hero- gunshot wounds.” ism and narrowly escaped Then Smith felt a bullet hit death this week when he his chest. It ricocheted off, was shot in the chest while leaving his vest with a large trying to save lives in Iraq. hole. Smith was able to brush off During a lull in the fighting what should have been a fatal the next day, Smith used a blow when the round deflect- satellite phone to call his par- ed off his bullet-proof Kevlar ents on Luquer Street. It was 2 vest. am, when the phone rang, said his mother, Joann Smith. Smith, who grew up in Car- Thomas Smith Jr. roll Gardens and whose par- “He said to me, ‘Mom just ents still live there, was remember, there’s going to be among the 14,000 troops of bulance and Holden, the driv- a thing in the paper so I want the lead division that stormed er, was hit in the hand. Smith you to be OK when you read Baghdad this week. pulled Holden from the vehi- it,’” Joann Smith told The On April 4, the young cle but the corporal was shot Brooklyn Papers. “As long as corpsman rushed into an am- in his other hand during the I can speak to him and he’s bush after an M1 tank was de- escape. going to be OK, I’ll hang in stroyed by an Iraqi missile. Nearby, another captain there.” Mango / Greg Smith and Cpl. Luke Holden was shot in the face, accord- His father, Thomas Smith raced their ambulance to the ing to the New York Times, Sr., longtime director of the flaming tank as it lay disabled whose embedded reporter re- Saint Mary Star of the Sea in the road. The Iraqis, how- counted the details. church sports program, while ever, began firing on the am- Smith began treating sol- See ALIVE on page 4 The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn OK to new Local firehouses to close Cops eye Slope zoning By Patrick Gallahue with disdain and a pledge to protest the Monty The Brooklyn Papers closings. The Brooklyn Papers “You think you’ve seen protests now? A firehouse in Cobble Hill and one You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” said Council- The City Planning Commission this week voted in Sunset Park will be closed to help man Bill DeBlasio, who rallied a small Bomber 3 in favor of a proposal to institute height limits in tighten the city’s budget gap. group to protest outside Engine 204 on Park Slope without affixing a controversial propos- A commission appointed by Mayor Monday afternoon. By Patrick Gallahue al to include affordable housing in the plan. Michael Bloomberg, the City Council and The commission’s 5-2 vote defied mul- The Brooklyn Papers The vote was 11-2, with two commissioners, William the Fire Department, this week ruled in fa- tiple protests held outside the firehouses Police would not rule out any of Grinker and Karen Phillips, the only ones to oppose the vor of the mayor’s proposal to close five since the cost-cutting move was an- / Greg Mango / Greg three possible suspects this week plan. Both thought there should be greater consideration Brooklyn firehouses, one in Manhattan nounced by Bloomberg late last year. in the investigation of a bizarre for the inclusion of affordable housing. and two in Queens. “This decision makes absolutely no incident in which pipe bombs The application now goes before the City Council’s Among the firehouses that will be sense,” said Borough President Marty Land Use committee. closed are Engine Company 204 in Cob- Markowitz. “The tragic events of 9-11 were found in a police officer’s “I want to find a way to work this out,” said Park Slope ble Hill, on Degraw Street between Court graphically illustrated that our firefighters sport utility vehicle, right outside her Brooklyn Heights home — Councilman Bill DeBlasio. “But it must include affordable and Smith streets, and Engine Company are New York City’s first line of defense, Papers The Brooklyn housing and that’s the way the council will feel.” 278 in Sunset Park, on Seventh Avenue so we can never do anything that will Councilmen David Yassky and Bill DeBlasio flank ac- which was targeted by a pipe See ZONING on page 4 between 50th and 51st streets. make our city more vulnerable to attack. tivist Lori Burch, who holds a photo of Engine 204’s bomber two years ago. Local elected officials met the ruling See CLOSED on page 6 truck buried at Ground Zero, at Monday’s protest. At the core of the investigation are the female police officer and her hus- band, and a former family friend who is behind bars for setting off a bomb in their apartment building in May 2001. An investigator told The Brooklyn Papers this week that there are a num- ber of theories that are being pursued, Seal of approval although he declined to elaborate. Police have pulled records of corre- spondence for Stephen Alster, who Marine mammal jumps ashore in Hook was convicted of perpetrating the 2001 bombing, from the Green Haven Cor- By Patrick Gallahue Gowanus Industrial Park at the incapacitated, although it rectional Facility upstate, to check The Brooklyn Papers end of Columbia Street, was showed no visible injuries. who had contact with him since his 20 showing the Grain Terminal to The animal lay in a corner on years-to-life sentence began last May. The tale of a seal seen a contractor, when they saw its right side for several hours, In addition, the New York Post re- swimming in the increas- the seal swimming around the atop bricks, trash and broken ported that the apartment belonging to ingly less toxic Gowanus dock. He got into his truck to glass, as steam rose from its Steven and Yensy Thomas, both 33, at Canal has become — buy the seal some squid to eat pelt on the unseasonably frigid 68 Montague St., was searched for locally anyway — a kind but when he returned the seal spring afternoon. The only fragments of PVC tubing, which was of urban Yeti. had jumped ashore. move it made, was to raise its used to make the inoperative bombs On Tuesday, however, a 40- The marine mammal ate a left flipper as if to wave. discovered in their SUV. pound harp seal — native to bit of snow, paying no atten- The specialists from the Shortly after 10 am on March 31, the North Atlantic and Arctic tion to the squid, and then Wildlife Conservation Society, five PVC pipes filled with gasoline oceans — jumped ashore in shimmied its way under a sus- which runs the New York and Sheetrock screws, as well as a .357-caliber revolver and a .380-cal- / Tom Callan Red Hook. The seal planted it- pended, corrugated steel con- Aquarium as well as the city’s self on property abutting the veyer belt attached to the long- zoos, estimated the seal to be a iber automatic were discovered in the Port of New York Grain Ele- dormant silos. little over a year old. backseat of Police Officer Yensy vator Terminal, where the Noticing that the seal ap- Kate McClave, a lab servic- Thomas’ 1992 Isuzu, which was Gowanus Canal flows out into peared hurt, Quadrozzi called es manager for the conserva- parked in a fire zone in front of her the Gowanus Bay.