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HEROES of the Month
Photo Credit: Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP’s Office
Borough President Adams announced that Ahmed Khalifa, a Muslim high
school student from Midwood who helped cops arrest the assailant of an Orthodox
Jewish woman on the subway, was named his “Hero of the Month” for
December 2016; the declaration was made during a ceremony in the Rotunda
of Brooklyn Borough Hall.
NOVEMBER 2016:
GOOD
SAMARITANS
ANTONIO PIÑA
AND LUIS RUIZ
Ruiz, a 46-year-old martial arts
master, and Piña, his 28-year-old
stepson and a fellow karate instructor,
were heading for their apartment
in East Williamsburg on Monday, October
17th when they heard strange
sounds coming from behind a van
nearby. They found a man on top of
and aggressively shaking 27-yearold
Miriam Braverman. Ruiz told Piña
to follow the attacker while he stayed
with the victim. Piña, an auxiliary police
o cer for seven years for the
nearby 90th Precinct, got cops on the
phone and told them exactly where
the man was headed. When a police
vehicle pulled up, Piña helped identify
him for arrest.
DECEMBER 2016:
GOOD SAMARITAN
AHMED KHALIFA
Khalifa, a 17-year-old senior at
Midwood High School, was on a Coney
Island-bound Q train on Tuesday,
December 27th, coming home
after working a shift at the Central
Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library,
when he saw a man slam
his open hand into the face of an
Orthodox Jewish woman, who was
simply reading her book. When the
assailant ran o , Khalifa held the
subway doors and yelled at the conductor
to stay in the station and call
for help. Along with members of the
Flatbush Shomrim, Khalifa spotted
the attacker at a bus stop and the
group waited quietly until cops arrived.
Additionally, seven months
prior, Khalifa helped pull a suicidal
homeless man away from jumping
onto the tracks from a train.
JANUARY 2017:
NYPD DETECTIVE
STEVEN FRANZEL
Detective Franzel of Narcotics
Bureau Brooklyn South was the lead
investigator of Operation Rose Garden,
which was taken down the Friday
before Labor Day in an attempt to
curb gun violence that holiday weekend.
The indictments in this e ort
were fi nished up in January by the
Brooklyn District Attorney’s O ce.
Forty-one individuals, which included
members and associates of the Crips
street gang, were apprehended and
charged with crimes of conspiracy,
criminal sale of a controlled substance,
and criminal possession of a
weapon.
FEBRUARY 2017:
NYPD LIEUTENANT
DETECTIVE
JOHN RUSSO
On Saturday, February 4th, the
man responsible for the murder of
Karina Vetrano, a 30-year-old resident
of Howard Beach who was slain
last August while jogging, was arrested.
After months of searching
for the killer with little hope in sight,
Williamsburg-born Lieutenant Detective
Russo, a current resident of Howard
Beach, followed up on a memory
he had of seeing a man being apprehended
for suspicious activity in the
neighborhood. That suspicion led to
further investigations until fi nally
a name came up. His DNA samples
matched the samples left on Vetrano’s
fi ngernails.
MARCH 2017:
FIREFIGHTERS
TODD BRENNER
AND ANDREW
SCHARF
On Sunday, March 5th, a fi re broke
out at Zion House of Faith Church in
Ocean Hill. The only way for Ubeaka
McKinney, a third-fl oor resident, to
escape was through his window.
Firefi ghters Brenner and Scharf of
Ladder Company 176 in Bedford-
Stuyvesant responded to the emergency
and arrived at the scene of the
fi re. Quickly thinking on his feet, Firefi
ghter Scharf decided to use a rare
and risky technique of connecting a
rope from the roof of the building to
the third-fl oor window. He lowered
himself down, grabbed McKinney
from the window, and held him tight
as Firefi ghter Brenner lowered them
both safely down to the ground.
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