Broad Daylight Robbery Unnerving

An alarming trend — pedestrians being robbed (and sometimes beaten) on Riverhead streets — continued last week.

A woman walked into a nearby police station just before 5:30 on Thursday, October 18, and told an officer on duty she had just been robbed. She was on East Main Street near Riverside Drive, she said, when a black man she did not recognize grabbed her and demanded cash. He rifled her jacket pockets, came up with $140, and fled the scene on foot.

Police responded, unleashing a Suffolk County K-9 unit headed east on Main Street, where the assailant was last spotted.

Riverhead Town Police canvassed the area to no avail. The investigation is open and eyewitnesses are being sought. All information will be kept confidential.

Residents and community leaders were concerned the incident took place near the aquarium in the revitalized section of Main Street that has been attracting visitors back to the once thriving area of town. But a persistent drug trade in the neighborhood has stymied police and several pedestrians have been robbed.

Two days earlier police announced they had taken a shooting suspect from another incident into custody Rayquan Lee of Calverton, they said, was the man who shot two people behind a bar on Railroad Avenue on September 29. The 18-year-old was charged with first-degree assault. He was remanded to county jail in lieu of a $1 million bond.

Driving Related Charges

Riverhead Police said a routine traffic stop on October 13 resulted in the arrest of a Calverton man who was packing a Ruger .380 handgun. Roger Foster, 21, was stopped on Kroemer Avenue near Old Country Road just before 6 PM. He allegedly had Oxycodone pills in his possession, police said.

Foster was hit with a criminal possession of a loaded firearm in the second degree charge, a class C felony, and criminal possession of a controlled substance in the second degree.

In other news, a man was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital after being ejected from his vehicle during a head-on crash in Aquebogue on October 18.

Chris Hollborn of Aquebogue, 52, suffered serious head injuries when David Gordon, 77, of Mattituck allegedly drove his 2018 Tesla westbound across double yellow lines on Main Road, and collided with Hollborn’s 2006 Dodge Ram. Gordon may have been thrown from his truck, onlookers reported.

Police said there were no passengers in either vehicle but onlookers reported Main Road was closed most of the day.

rmurphy@indyeastend.com