{"id":3365,"date":"2008-04-23T09:52:42","date_gmt":"2008-04-23T14:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=3365"},"modified":"2008-04-23T09:52:42","modified_gmt":"2008-04-23T14:52:42","slug":"great_pizza_and_now_throwing_stars_too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/04\/great_pizza_and_now_throwing_stars_too.html","title":{"rendered":"Great Pizza . . . And Now Throwing Stars, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

The elusive Ninja Burglar<\/a> turns out to be up to three Albanians<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The NYPD has quietly closed the book on Staten Island’s so-called Ninja Burglar case, after authorities started deportation proceedings against at least one Albanian man they believe to be connected to the string of break-ins, police sources told the Advance. <\/p>\n

About a week and a half ago, the police department dismantled the investigative team hunting for the serial burglar, those sources said.<\/p>\n

“The investigation is dormant, with no new leads,” Paul Browne, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for public information, confirmed to the Advance yesterday afternoon. “Investigators believe that an individual suspected [but with insufficient evidence to make an arrest] of being the burglar is among three Albanian nationals currently facing deportation because of their illegal status in the United States.” <\/p>\n

Browne did not name the three Albanian nationals. <\/p>\n

The Advance broke the story on its Web site, silive.com, yesterday afternoon. <\/p>\n

Police had linked the “Ninja Burglar” — who received the nickname from the media after a Dongan Hills man reported fighting off a nunchuk-wielding intruder in a ninja costume last September — to 19 separate break-ins, mainly in the Todt Hill and Grymes Hill neighborhoods, between May 2007 and January of this year. <\/p>\n

Multiple law-enforcement sources close to the investigation told the Advance that investigators were first clued into a possible Albanian connection to the burglary pattern last fall, when they learned that several Albanian men from the same area in neighboring Macedonia had formed a loosely knit crew to commit burglaries. <\/p>\n

In some instances, they would wait for the other members of their Albanian community to go out to cultural events, then strike their vacant homes, the sources said. <\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

. . . [S]ources said, two other members of the group were believed responsible for several of the break-ins in the Ninja Burglar case, but were never charged. <\/p>\n

With their forensic and investigative leads exhausted, police contacted federal immigration officials, who started deportation proceedings against several members of the group last month, according to police sources.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The elusive Ninja Burglar turns out to be up to three Albanians: The NYPD has quietly closed the book on Staten Island’s so-called Ninja Burglar case, after authorities started deportation proceedings against at least one Albanian man they believe to be connected to the string of break-ins, police sources told the Advance. About a week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law_order","category-staten_island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}