CRIME BLOTTER

Jared Backlash

Jared Backlash The second area man in recent weeks with a beef against sandwich shops was arrested last Saturday. On August 23, Robert Petrone, 41, robbed a Subway shop in the Bronx. After flashing a toy gun, he flitted away with an untold amount of cash. Five days later, he walked into a Blimpie's and tried the same thing, but this time he wasn't so lucky. Police also suspect that the chain-hating Petrone was responsible for the robbery of a Blockbuster Video in the same neighborhood the night before.

Some girls with no sense of fun were walking down a Harlem street Saturday night when a group of teenage boys sprayed them with water bottles. It was a hot and sticky night, so you'd think a little splash of cool water might've been refreshing—nope. One got on her cellphone and called her boyfriend, who showed up with a pal a few minutes later. After a brief and angry exchange of words, one of them whipped out a gun and shot one of the teens in the chest, killing him. As it happens, the boy who was shot—15-year-old Martin Fenton—may have been innocent of dousing humorless girls. His relatives claim he only appeared on the scene out of curiosity after hearing all the commotion.

Joseph Williams' mom threw him out of their second-floor Crown Heights apartment Sunday evening, so the 16-year-old just went up to the fourth floor to stay with his aunt. Sometime before dawn, however, Williams, who clearly hadn't been paying attention in science class, snuck back downstairs, doused his mom's front door with lighter fluid, set it ablaze—then went back upstairs.

In the end, Williams and four of his relatives were hospitalized with serious smoke inhalation. All are expected to be okay.

Around noon on Monday, two men in the Bronx robbed a carpet store for some reason.

At about 5 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, a man was arrested for acting all crazy-like on 2nd Ave. He double-parked his car between 9th and 10th Sts. and began screaming "gibberish" and "nonsense" at pedestrians. After several hours of this, someone decided he had a bomb and called the cops, who evacuated the block. The man refused to show any ID, so cops wrestled him to the ground and took him away. A search of the car revealed no explosives, but as one witness told the Post, "When I saw all the cops coming and everything, I was, like, 'Whoa.'"

And speaking of non-existent explosives, New Jersey resident Ronald Kinzer, 52, went to Queens on Wednesday afternoon, called 911 from a payphone, and told the operator he had a bomb.

Unfortunately for Kinzer, two bored cops were sitting across the street. When the call about the bomb threat came over the radio—including the exact location of the payphone—they ambled across the street and arrested him. He's now being charged with not paying attention to his surroundings. o