Two dead after Thursday flash floods
Two men died in flash flooding from the heavy storm that hit Brooklyn and Manhattan with record-breaking rainfall on Thursday.
The first man was 39 years old and got trapped in his basement in Flatbush while attempting to rescue one of his dogs. According to the fire department, a driver was able to pull him out of the water, however they weren’t able to confirm if his death was caused by flooding. Another 43-year-old man was also found in the boiler room of his basement in Washington Heights. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police did not confirm the names of the two men and are investigating both deaths.
The storm, which produced three inches of rain and 50 mph winds, broke daily rainfall records across three locations in the metropolitan area. The rain had been predicted to fall steadily over eight hours, however, it arrived in 20-minute downpours that began around 3:50 p.m. Flatbush and Hollis, Queens were the two hardest hit areas, and where 13 people died during Hurricane Ida in 2021.
Piles of fallen leaves and trash scattered across the streets and sidewalks, clogging drains and leaving 1,500 residents without electricity and many without access to their cars, some of which floated away.
“When you look at the amount of water that was coming down, our sewer systems are just not built to handle that,” Mayor Eric Adams told radio station 1010 WINS.
Railroads like the Long Island Expressway and the Long Island Rail Road experienced closures and hefty delays in both directions. New Jersey Transit also reported up to 30 minute delays and the Amtrak temporarily passed train service at Newark Airport at 4 p.m.
Early voting for the mayoral election breaks records
More than 164,000 people cast their ballots on the first two days of early voting, with the past week garnering well over 700,000 early votes total — an over-550,000 increase from New York City’s last mayoral election in 2021.
Early voting ended Sunday. Nov. 2 as all three mayoral candidates ramp up campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s election. Zohran Mamdani, Democratic nominee and frontrunner, spent his weekend with Reverend Al Sharpton at the National Action Network’s headquarters to draw support from Black voters in Harlem. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, independent candidate, was grand marshal of a parade in Cambria Heights, Queens and met with voters in Jamaica, Queens and Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Curtis Sliwa, Republican nominee, continued to reject calls to drop out of the race. On Sunday, Sliwa attended a talk show, where he reiterated confidence in his strength as a candidate — claiming that he is “the only genuine New Yorker” — despite polling in a distant third place.
“The people are going to choose the next mayor, not the billionaires, not the insiders and not the influencers. They failed every step of the way,” Sliwa said.
On Halloween, Sliwa attended parades in Queens and Manhattan to meet with costumed voters, and Mamdani distributed candy at a Brooklyn bookstore. Cuomo posted a Halloween video generated by artificial intelligence that depicts Mamdani trick or treating only to take off his mask to reveal he is Sliwa.
2 men sentenced to 25 years for trying to kill Iranian Activist
Two men were sentenced to 25 years in prison after they plotted to assassinate Masih Alinejad, a journalist, activist and critic of the Iranian parliament’s compulsory hijabs for women.
U.S. officials said that Iran has tried several times to kidnap or kill Alinejad before defendants Rafit Amirov and Polad Omarov, members of the Russian mob working on behalf of an Iranian general, stalked and planned to assassinate Alinejad in Brooklyn. Federal prosecutors said that Iran planned to silence a voice that was internationally recognized in order to scare away any other activists, asking that each of the men be sentenced to 55 years in prison for the attempted crime.
“The intended murder was a politically motivated assassination attempt,” Manhattan judge Colleen McMahon said after she sentenced the men.“This sort of conduct will not be tolerated by the United States.”
The assasination plan began in 2022, when a network run by an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps brigadier general offered Amirov $500,000 to hire a team and kill Alinejad. Amirov turned to Omarov, a Georgian living in Eastern Europe, who hired Khalid Mehdiyev as an assassin.
Omarov declined to speak in court, but Amirov, who spoke through a translator, said, “I always try to avert conflict and bring people to common ground.”
Lawyers for Amirov and Omarov wrote that since their clients had been thousands of miles from Brooklyn when Mehdiyev showed up at her house and didn’t finish the job, their sentences should be decreased.
Contact Natalie Deoragh at [email protected].