Category: Security

Madison Square Garden boss and Knicks owner James Dolan has been linked to fallen movie maker Harvey Weinstein i n a new federal lawsuit accusing the pair of sex trafficking and sexual assault.

According to a complaint filed Tuesday, Dolan used his influence to take advantage of a 27-year-old massage therapist.

The woman, Kellye Croft, alleges Dolan manipulated her into an abusive sexual relationship during a 2013 concert tour for his band, “JD and the Straight Shot,” which opened for The Eagles.

“Dolan quickly manipulated the vulnerable and isolated woman—who was 30 years younger than him—into a sexual relationship,” according to Croft’s lawsuit, which was filed by attorney Douglas Wigdor.

He also “coordinated” a meeting between Croft and Weinstein, leading to the movie mogul sexually assaulting her in 2014, the lawsuit alleges.

Dolan has claimed he knew nothing about Weinstein’s long history as a sex predator, even writing a song in 2018 about sins of his some of his powerful friends called “I Should’ve Known.”

“There is absolutely no merit to any of the allegations against Mr. Dolan. Kellye Croft and James Dolan had a friendship,” E. Danya Perry, of The Perry law Firm said in a statement Tuesday. “The references to Harvey Weinstein are simply meant to inflame and appear to be plagiarized from prior cases against Mr. Weinstein. These claims reflect an act of retaliation by an attorney who has brought multiple cases against Mr. Dolan and has not, and cannot, win a judgement against him.

“Mr. Dolan always believed Ms. Croft to be a good person and is surprised she would agree to these claims. Bottom line, this is not a he said/she said matter and there is compelling evidence to back up our position. We look forward to proving that in court.”

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© 2024 New York Daily News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Charlie Milhans was named the 2023 Veteran of the Year back in November but he is still basking in the glow.

The longtime city resident was given the title at the annual Veterans Day observation programs held on Nov. 11, 2023 in Monument Square and at City Hall. Milhans said it “meant a lot” to him to be named Veteran of the Year and was especially glad to be able to honor his wife of 47 years, Eunju Milhans, “for the sacrifice she did to make our family a success, for the times I was deployed away from her and our kids.”

Milhans was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington, where he entered the Army in June 1974. He graduated from Wilson High School in Tacoma, earned a BS from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 1989, and an MBA from Western New England University in 1994.

He and his wife have three adult children, one who was born while he was stationed in Korea and two born in Leominster, where they have called home since 1992. Milhans served in the intelligence branch of the U.S. Army from June 1974 to February 1995 and was stationed in a myriad of locations including Fort Ord in California, Fort Sill in Oklahoma, and Fort Carson in Colorado as well as Korea, Japan, England, and Germany.

When asked what he learned during his time in the military and what he took away from it, the 73-year-old recounted his Army experience.

“I learned a lot about leadership, how to manage projects, and how wonderful our country is,” Milhans said. “I was glad my kids could experience seeing North Korea and a former concentration camp in Germany. They got to see the difference between totalitarianism and democracy in our country.”

He found out from Director of Veterans Services Richard Voutour that he had been selected as Veteran of the Year about a month before the ceremony.

“Our city chooses the honor for what they not only did in the military but what they have done for the community,” Milhans said.

Voutour said it made sense to name Milhans the Veteran of the Year as he is a longtime active member, contributor, and past commander of the Leominster American Legion Post 151 and heavily involved with the Rotary Club of Leominster “helping to change lives every day.”

Milhans said he will continue to serve in those capacities, roles he is happy to fulfill.

“There is nothing more pleasurable for me than giving back to my fellow veterans and the community.”

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(c) 2024 Sentinel & Enterprise

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Kate Beckinsale announced this week the death of her stepfather, British television director Roy Battersby.

Battersby died in Los Angeles surrounded by family after “a brief period of illness,” according to a statement shared Monday during Emmys night on Beckinsale’s Instagram account. He was 87.

“I have no words yet,” the “Underworld” and “Pearl Harbor” actor captioned her post. “I fought for you with everything I had. Oh Roy I am so sorry I lost.”

Last week, immediately after her Golden Globes appearance, Beckinsale had rushed to the hospital, sharing photos of her gathering with others around a patient’s bed, still dressed in her gown. The following day, she posted a black square on her Instagram without a caption. Her Instagram bio read, “A fatherless girl thinks all things are possible, and nothing is safe.” Though Beckinsale did not confirm the death of her stepfather, fans began to send their condolences. Earlier reports from December shared alleged details about Battersby’s illness, which included an apparent cancer diagnosis and and stroke.

Battersby joined Beckinsale’s family of actors shortly after her father, Richard Beckinsale, known for roles on British sitcoms, suddenly died in 1979 after a heart attack. While dating Beckinsale’s mother, Jody Loe, who is also an actor, Battersby moved into their home when Beckinsale was 9, according to a 1997 interview with the Independent. Battersby eventually married Loe in 1997.

“Roy knew I was a traumatised little person,” Beckinsale, 50, told the Independent, adding that around the time he moved in, she also struggled with an eating disorder due to her grief. “He didn’t expect this idyllic little girl in plaits who’d be nice to him. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted my mum to marry anyone else. … And I certainly didn’t want any brothers. Roy had four sons and one daughter. I wasn’t in a boy mood. He’s been so brilliant. He wasn’t pushy, he let me come to him.”

“I couldn’t have knitted a better one,” she added, referring to Battersby. Yet despite his inviting presence, Battersby also invited some controversy into Beckinsale’s household.

Battersby was also an active member of the Workers’ Revolutionary party, a Trotskyist communist group in England. His activities had him blacklisted from the TV industry for a stretch of his career. His 1977 TV documentary, “The Palestinian,” drew condemnation for its critical stance on Israel and featured a controversial interview with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The movie also starred Oscar winner Vanessa Redgrave, whose public pro-Palestine beliefs also drew intense backlash throughout her career. During the drama, Beckinsale said, their home was tapped by government authorities.

“Me and my girlfriends would be on the phone talking, you know, ‘bum, willy, fanny,’ and we’d hear the little click on the phone as the listener came on,” she recalled to the Guardian in 2016. “And you can imagine some spook somewhere trying to crack the ‘bum-willy-fanny’ code!”

After ending his affiliation with the Workers’ party, Battersby’s career rebounded, and he directed several episodes of the hit BBC crime drama “Between the Lines” during its three-season run from 1992 to 1994.

Along with Monday’s statement, Beckinsale shared a video montage showing photos and video of Battersby with Beckinsale and Loe, laughing and dancing together. The video also included an interview with Battersby, during which he recalled living through World War II in England as a child. At night, during air raids, he remembered hiding inside concrete shelters built on his street of Richmond Avenue in London.

When the war ended, Battersby said, that same street transformed into a festive party, with neighbors setting up tables and chairs on the road and feasting on banana sandwiches, a rare commodity during the war. “It was a wonderful day because it meant the air raids and everything were ending,” he recalled, “and people weren’t having to leave their families.”

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© 2024 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A new report reveals the United States Army has delisted “The Calling” on YouTube amid continued recruiting shortfalls. The controversial 2021 advertising campaign featured an LGBTQ+ recruitment video of a soldier with two moms.

According to Military.com, the Army delisted “The Calling” from its YouTube channel last week. While delisting a video on YouTube does not delete the video, it prevents the video from being listed on the platform’s search results and recommendations. However, users can still access the video with the original video link.

Addressing the reason behind the delisting of the advertisement videos, Laura DeFrancisco, an Army marketing spokesperson, told Military.com that the music rights for the advertisement campaign were expiring.

Military.com reported that the Army’s 2021 video advertisements, including an ad called “Emma” featuring a soldier raised by two lesbian women, were released in an attempt by the U.S. military under President Joe Biden’s administration to attract potential LGBTQ+ and other minority recruits for military service.

“This is the story of a soldier who operates your nation’s Patriot Missile Defense Systems. It begins in California with a little girl raised by two moms,” the narrator explains in the Army’s YouTube video advertisement. “Although I had a fairly typical childhood, took ballet, played violin, I also marched for equality. I like to think I’ve been defending freedom from an early age.”

READ MORE: US Army facing major decline in white recruits: Report

“When I was six years old, one of my moms had an accident that left her paralyzed,” the narrator added. “Doctors said she might never walk again, but she tapped into my family’s pride to get back on her feet, eventually standing at the altar to marry my other mom.”

At the time of the Army’s 2021 advertisement campaign, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) shared a tweet comparing the U.S. Army’s video with a video of Russian soldiers, writing, “Holy crap. Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea….”

Over the past few years, the U.S. military has suffered a significant decline in recruitment. Last year, the military missed its recruitment goal by a combined total of 41,000 troops, with the Army falling 10,000 recruits short of its 65,000 recruitment goal.

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), who served as a Green Beret, previously warned that the military has been “overly politicized and hyper-focused on DEI initiatives,” adding, “Under the Biden Administration, the Pentagon has diverted its focus from lethality and have instead pushed initiatives that have politicized our warfighting ranks and harmed our military readiness.”

A new report claims Chinese scientists have developed a coronavirus strain that attacks the brain and has a 100% kill rate in mice used to experiment with the virus.

The report, which was obtained by Daily Mail, indicates that Beijing-based scientists allegedly linked to China’s military cloned the GX_P2V virus, which was originally discovered in 2019 in Malaysian pangolins prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Daily Mail, the virus was stored in a Beijing lab after it was initially cloned. While it has not yet been revealed when the newly disclosed study was completed, researchers involved with the experiment suggested that the coronavirus could have experienced a “virulence-enhancing mutation” while it was stored in the lab, which could have contributed to the virus’s kill rate.

“Severe brain infection during the later stages of infection may be the key cause of death in these mice,” researchers noted, according to Daily Mail. “This is the first report showing that a SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus can cause 100 percent mortality in hACE2 mice, suggesting a risk for GX_P2V to spill over into humans.”

According to Daily Mail, the mice involved in the coronavirus research were “humanized” in order to examine how the virus could potentially impact humans. Researchers reportedly documented that each of the infected mice “surprisingly” died within just eight days.

READ MORE: Fauci admits Covid social distancing not based on science

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Francis Balloux, who is an infectious disease expert at University College London, described the study by Chinese scientists as “terrible” and “scientifically totally pointless.”

“I can see nothing of vague interest that could be learned from force-infecting a weird breed of humanized mice with a random virus,” he wrote. “Conversely, I could see how such stuff might go wrong.”

Richard Ebright, a chemistry professor at Rutgers University, told the Daily Mail that he agrees with Balloux’s perspective on the coronavirus research by Chinese scientists.

“The preprint does not specify the biosafety level and biosafety precautions used for the research,” Ebright stated. “The absence of this information raises the concerning possibility that part or all of this research, like the research in Wuhan in 2016-2019 that likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic, recklessly was performed without the minimal biosafety containment and practices essential for research with potential pandemic pathogens.”

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

An ethnic armed group attempted to capture a city in northeastern Myanmar, residents in the area told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday. 

After the Kachin Independence Army attacked Kutkai’s junta infantry battalion on Monday, about 100 regime soldiers fled the area with their families, sources close to the junta said. Infantry Battalion 123 is located in Kutkai township’s Nam Hpat Kar village, roughly 55 kilometers [34 miles] from China’s border.

A ceasefire was called in northern Shan state on Thursday between junta troops and the Three Brotherhood Alliance, composed of three ethnic armed groups. The alliance is made up of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, Ta’ang National Liberation Army, and the Arakan Army. 

Despite the ceasefire brokered by China during talks in Kunming, other groups opposed to junta control are continuing to seize territory in the northeast. 

The junta claimed the Ta’ang National Liberation Army was involved in the attack on Kutkai.

The Kachin Independence Army launched their attack on Infantry Battalion 123 on Sunday night and captured it the following morning, a Kutkai resident said, asking to remain nameless for fear of reprisals. 

“The camp has been captured by the KIA since Monday morning. Since the camp was captured, locals in Nam Hpat Kar village fled because the military junta retaliated with heavy artillery and airstrikes,” he told RFA. “This camp was mainly attacked by the 4th and 10th KIA battalions.”

The Kachin Independence Army seized weapons and ammunition from this camp, locals said, adding that bodies of junta soldiers were also found. However, RFA could not independently verify these claims.

A group of more than 50 soldiers in Nam Hpat Kar village’s Infantry Battalion 123 often fired at nearby villages with heavy weapons, locals said.

Despite locals claiming the ethnic armed force has succeeded, junta media and the Kachin Independence Army both stated the outcome is still unclear.

The Kachin Independence Army’s information officer Col. Naw Bu told RFA that the group shot down a junta fighter jet around 12 pm on Tuesday. Despite this, he added the capture of the base is not official yet.

“I have seen posts [about the capture] on social media. The frontline hasn’t reported yet that the camp has been captured,” he said. “But I would like to say that there is nothing impossible under the military situation.”

Some of the nearly 100 soldiers fleeing the infantry battalion’s base had been injured in the attack, independent media outlets reported, citing military officials. 

The Kachin Independence Army has not yet captured the base, according to an update on Tuesday from the junta’s Defense Service, adding that reports from local outlets were fake news.

The Kachin Independence Army and Ta’ang National Liberation Army attacked the junta base using “superior force and drones,” the statement said. It added regime soldiers and their family members managed to resist the attacks, and retaliated by shooting only at Kachin Independence Army soldiers responsible for the attack. 

RFA called military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun on Tuesday afternoon to learn more about the attack, but he did not respond by the time of publication.

If you’re planning for retirement, one of your key questions is how much you can earn from Social Security — what’s the maximum you can get? As of January 2024, the maximum benefit you can receive at full retirement age is $3,822 per month. But that’s only part of the story, because the real maximum benefit is actually a fair bit higher — and here’s how to get it.

The maximum Social Security check

Your maximum Social Security benefit depends significantly on the age you file for your benefit, among other factors such as your contributions to the program:

—Your maximum benefit if you file at age 62 — the youngest possible age — is $2,710 per month.

—Your maximum benefit if you file at full retirement age — between 66 and 67 — is $3,822 per month.

—Your maximum benefit if you file at age 70 — the age when extra benefits stop accruing — is $4,873 per month.

Social Security reduces benefits as much as 30% for those filing at age 62. On the other hand, it increases benefits by 8% for each year after full retirement age that you delay filing.

In contrast to these maximum amounts, the average Social Security benefit is quite a bit lower — about $1,706 per month, as of August 2023. That’s less than half of the maximum benefit for a worker starting benefits at full retirement age in 2024.

While waiting longer to file may maximize your total monthly benefit, it may not maximize your total lifetime payout from Social Security depending on your longevity. You’ll want to calculate your likely breakeven age to see when it might be best to file for Social Security benefits.

With this Bankrate Social Security calculator, you can estimate your future monthly benefit.

How are Social Security benefits calculated?

Social Security calculates benefits using a complex formula to determine your primary insurance amount (PIA) — that is, your benefit at full retirement age.

To do so, Social Security takes your 35 highest-earning years after age 21 to figure your average indexed monthly earnings. You’ll get credit only for earnings up to the Social Security wage base, which is the maximum amount of income on which Social Security assesses taxes. For 2024, the Social Security wage base is $168,600, an increase from $160,200 in 2023.

Employees pay 6.2% of their income up to the wage base, while their employers put up another 6.2%. The self-employed foot both halves of this Social Security tax.

And if you don’t have 35 years of earnings? Social Security will figure a zero in for each missing year, reducing your average monthly earnings.

The numbers from these high-earning years are summed and then indexed for inflation to determine your average indexed monthly earnings. Then Social Security applies a graduated formula based on these earnings to determine your actual payment at full retirement.

You can see the full details in this article and then run through a real-life example.

How to maximize your Social Security benefit

Based on the formula above and other Social Security rules, you have a few key ways to maximize your benefit amount:

—Earn more. You can earn more in a given year, up to the Social Security wage base, and get more credit, raising your average monthly earnings.

—Add more high-earning years to your average. Your 35 highest-earning years are counted in figuring your benefit, so working later in life, when you likely earn more, may push out lower-earnings years when you were younger or even just fill in gap years that would otherwise have no or insufficient earnings.

—Delay filing for your benefit. Your benefit will be reduced substantially if you file before full retirement age and will increase significantly if you wait as late as age 70 to file.

While you usually don’t get a second chance when it comes to Social Security, in at least two situations you can get a “do over,” allowing you to get a higher payout later.

—Suspend your benefit. If you took benefits before full retirement age and are not yet 70, you can suspend your benefit and earn credits for each month they’re suspended.

—Withdraw your benefit. If you took benefits less than a year ago and have never filed to withdraw your benefit before, then you can withdraw your benefit and it will be like you never filed at all. However, you’ll have to repay any money you’ve received.

If you’re trying to maximize your Social Security benefit, it makes sense to explore all the ways to do so. You have many levers to pull that can help you get a higher payout.

Bottom line

The maximum Social Security benefit relies on earning a high level of income over a long period, something that very few people achieve. But even if you aren’t a high earner, you can make smart moves, such as delaying filing for benefits, to increase your payout significantly.

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© 2024 Bankrate.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A well-known South Florida homeless advocate is branching out into a new area, creating a hotline with the ambitious goal of trying to stop mass shootings.

Sean Cononie, who has opened homeless shelters in Broward and Polk counties, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he hopes to use skills he has learned dealing with the mental-health challenges of his clients to try to help those who may want to commit violence.

Modeled after suicide-prevention hotlines, Cononie is launching a “mass shooting prevention call center” in his Davie estate.

The project will operate through his nonprofit agency called Coalition of Service and Charity Foundation. Cononie said he plans to self-fund the effort initially but volunteers and staff members in his organization are reaching out to seek potential funders.

He said he was heartbroken by the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland and other tragedies at schools, places of worship, businesses and other locations. He said he wanted to come up with an idea that hasn’t been tried much.

“If people call for suicides, I think they’re going to call for this,” Cononie said, noting research that shows that mass killers also tend to be suicidal.

“Our hope is people will call, we can talk them out of it and get them help,” he said. “If we can help people get some dangerous guns out of their hands, four or five people a year, I’d be happy.”

Cononie said he plans to formally announce the project at a news conference and start taking calls on Thursday.

Those who call the hotline number (605-667-4668 or 605-NO-SHOOT) will be connected to an operator who can provide resources to help those in crisis, he said. He also has started a website, 605-no-shoot.org.

“First of all, if you are planning to do a mass shooting right now, stop and please let us talk to you. We are here to help you,” a recorded message says when someone calls. “We do record calls for training but you do not have to tell us who you are or what number you are calling from.

“Again, please let us help you before you make the biggest mistake of your life,” the recording says. “Press any key to be connected to someone who can try and help.”

Cononie said those manning the hotline will only be required to notify law enforcement if the caller identifies a specific target, such as a person or a venue.

He plans to promote the hotline on TikTok and other social media sites, as well as take out ads and submit public service announcements to local and national media.

“People love you. You just don’t see it,” Cononie says in one promotional spot. “Do you want someone to hurt someone you love? I’m sure the answer is no. We want to help you without judgment. You’re not an evil person. You just need a little help.”

Cononie is launching the effort with his friend Debbie Espinoza, a Cooper City parent who has been an active volunteer with the Broward school district.

Espinoza said as part of this effort, she has been researching common traits between mass killers.

“It seems that they’re not necessarily suffering from mental illness like long-term. It’s more that they’re in a crisis and they are triggered by an event, a specific event usually losing someone,” she said.

She noted that was the case with the Parkland killer whose mother died a few months before he killed 17 people.

“Nobody has been successful, and it’s heartbreaking. It’s horrifying, and if we can do something to stop it, it’s our civic responsibility to do something,” she said.

Some family members who lost loved ones in Parkland said they are interested in learning more.

“While I can’t comment on this specific organization, I support any initiative that would reduce or eliminate school (mass) shootings,” Broward School Board Chairwoman Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa was killed at Parkland, said in a text.

Fellow board member Debbi Hixon lost her husband Chris, a coach and security monitor at Stoneman Douglas, during the mass shooting.

She said she’s glad to see new ideas, although she’s skeptical a hotline will have a significant impact.

“The likelihood that someone contemplating any kind of mass shooting, whether in a school or movie theater or a synagogue, I can’t image they would be inclined to call a hotline just prior,” she said.

Hixon said there’s a fear of being arrested that doesn’t exist for those considering suicide.

“But it can’t hurt. Anything is better than nothing, and I 100% appreciate someone trying to think outside the box,” she said. “Whatever we’ve been doing is clearly not working.”

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri has served as the chairman of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, which assessed information from the Parkland shooting and other mass-violence incidents in Florida and brought recommendations and improvements. Asked if he saw value in the planned hotline, Gualtieri replied, “I really don’t. But … it also does not hurt anything.”

“People who commit mass shootings are on the pathway to violence because of a real or perceived significant grievance,” Gualtieri said. “They feel wronged in some way and that’s why they act. This is different than someone with suicidal ideations who feels helpless and is really ‘screaming’ for help.

“Someone on the pathway to violence is very unlikely to take themself off that pathway in the self-help setting. Again … I don’t see the value but don’t see any harm other than those who are not serious may use it to get attention, or there will be those who pretend to be someone and report as another person for spite, etc.”

The proposal may be less controversial than one of Cononie’s other major passions — helping the homeless. His operation of homeless shelters has put him at odds with government officials.

In 2015, the city of Hollywood paid him $4.8 million for a shelter, seven homes and two time shares he owned. That payment included $2.3 million for Cononie agreeing to stay out of Hollywood for 30 years.

“I’ve always been an out-of-the-box thinker,” he said. “When I opened up a shelter, I basically did it overnight. That’s why I got in so much trouble with zoning and had to spend a half-million dollars in legal fees.”

He said he and Espinoza have only been working on the hotline idea for less than two months.

“I’ve been thinking for the past year there’s got to be some other way” to reduce mass shootings, he said. “Then I’m like, I want to do this, we need to do this, so let’s do it.”

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© 2024 South Florida Sun Sentinel

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Four people were killed and a fifth passenger was critically injured in a hot air balloon crash nearly halfway between Tucson and Phoenix.

Police in Eloy, Ariz., said on Facebook “a hot air balloon crash-landed in the desert area east of Sunshine Blvd.,” Sunday morning shortly before 8 a.m.

“The cause of the crash is currently unknown,” the police department said.

Local authorities are working with the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration to investigate the incident.

According to ABC News in Arizona, officials said the ill-fated balloon carried four passengers, a pilot and eight skydivers who exited the balloon’s gondola before the crash. Three of the victims reportedly died in a hospital after one person was declared dead at the site of the incident.

Witnesses told ABC News that balloon pilot Cornelius van der Walt was among the dead. Two area skydivers expressed surprise that van der Walt, whom they described as “an excellent balloon pilot,” was involved in the tragedy.

One of the victims was said to be a skydiver from Indiana visiting friends in Arizona. It’s unclear if she was planning to skydive Sunday.

Ballooning tragedies were responsible for 24 deaths between 2014 and 2021, according to the website Hot Air Flight. That relatively high number was inflated by a 2016 crash outside Lockhart, Texas killing 16 people in what’s believed to have been the deadliest commercial balloon incident in U.S. history.

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© 2024 New York Daily News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

A murder suspect was nabbed when he was stopped for smoking in the subway by NYPD cops who then quickly discovered he was being sought for a 2020 Queens slaying, police said Monday.

On Friday, transit cops in Brooklyn stopped Luis Hernandez, 36, for smoking. He would have been released with just a summons but when officers ran his name they learned he was wanted for murder.

He was taken to Queens, where detectives showed him video and photos of him at the murder scene on 31st St. near 36th Ave. in Astoria, police said.

Police say Hernandez and three or four others were involved in the Feb. 9, 2020, murder of Richard Hernandez, 21.

The suspect made incriminating statements, police said, and was charged with murder, gang assault and weapon possession.

“Mr. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty and fully intends on fighting the charges against him,” his lawyer, Mahmoud Rabah, told the Daily News Monday.

“There appears to be no scientific evidence or even physical evidence to support the charges. My client was questioned for hours when he was arrested Friday and emphatically denied stabbing anyone.”

The case, Rabah added, “rests on poor quality, grainy, and unclear surveillance video.”

Hernandez, who lives in Maspeth and has no prior arrests, was ordered held without bail when he was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court Sunday.

“Mr. Hernandez is a committed father of a young child,” Rabah said. “He is a hard-working immigrant who has held a stable job in a meat processing plant for years. He completely maintains his innocence and looks forward to his day in court.”

The victim, who is not related to the suspect, was with friends when a brawl erupted, with witnesses telling the Daily News at least one attacker had a machete and another had a knife.

The victim, who lived a few blocks away from where he was killed, was stabbed and slashed with more than one weapon. Medics rushed him to Mount Sinai Queens but he could not be saved.

Three other men were cut in the melee but suffered only minor wounds, police said at the time.

The attack was linked to gangs, police said Monday.

The suspect’s accomplices are still being sought.

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© 2024 New York Daily News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.