NYers can't agree if it's OK to ‘save' a parking space, take sides on vicious three-way brawl over spot
A wild caught-on-video street brawl over a Queens parking space has reignited a longtime debate over whether it's ever OK to claim a public spot on the street with an item — or even your body.
'No, it's not OK. If you don't have a car, you shouldn't be standing there,' said Daniel Rosario, 52, of the Upper East Side, who owns a car and parks on the street.
'This is public parking. You can't be reserving spaces if they're not there,' Rosario added, noting he once pulled into a spot anyway when someone tried to guard it for a friend who was nowhere to be seen.
3 A wild street fight caught on video over a Queens parking space has reignited a longtime debate over whether it's ever justified to put your body on the line for a public spot.
I-am-Mihnea/Reddit
The comments come after the now-viral video captured a mother-daughter duo, Andreea Dumitru, 45, and Sabrina Starman, 21, savagely attacking driver Jada McPherson after she tried to pull into a Ridgewood street spot that the pair were allegedly 'guarding' with their bodies.
The battle broke out at 18-28 Putnam Ave, where an unidentified man also joined in on the gang-up on McPherson, but apparently high-tailed it out of the area before police arrived, cops said.
When McPherson couldn't find another spot on the block, she came back to tell the family they couldn't guard parking spots, she previously told The Post. That's when the man went 'ballistic' and the mother-daughter pair flung racist language at McPherson, who is black.
But some Big Apple drivers and residents — accustomed to circling blocks in search of a coveted parking space — said everyone was a little at fault under the unwritten rules of city parking.
3 Andreea Dumitru, 45, and Sabrina Starman, 21, attacked and yelled slurs at Jada McPherson after she tried to pull into a Ridgewood street spot they were allegedly 'guarding' with their bodies.
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'Honestly, if you have a friend that you know is literally coming around the corner in like a minute? Yeah, what's the problem with that? But standing there longer than five minutes… absolutely not,' said Freddie Bennett, 41, a Ridgewood resident who doesn't own a car.
'But that's just how New Yorkers are, territorial… I understand why, but it's not something I'd ever consider doing.'
Mika Cook-Wraight, 25, agreed that the desperation is real, but it isn't worth putting your safety on the line.
3 Starman and Dumitru were later arrested and charged with first-degree assault and second-degree harassment for pelting Jada McPherson (pictured) over the spot, police said.
Dorian Geiger/NY Post
'I personally wouldn't get into a fight over it … because of how people drive here, I would not put my body on the line in front of cars,' she said.
'I'd be scared to stand in the street to save a spot. Because of how people drive here, I wouldn't put my body on the line.'
Cook-Wraight, who's originally from Boston, said saving spots with chairs or cones might work there, 'but that's just not sustainable here,' she quipped.
Starman and Dumitru were arrested and charged with first-degree assault and second-degree harassment, police said.
The mother-daughter duo has since apologized for the brawl after being hit with a slew of online death threats.
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They like being stealth. 9 Hoffa left his cottage home in suburban Lake Orion, Mich., near Detroit on July 30, 1975 for a 2 p.m. meeting at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant (shown) in nearby Bloomfield Hills. He called his wife, Josephine, from the restaurant's parking lot at 2:15 p.m. to tell her no one showed up. It was the last time anyone ever heard from him. Bettmann Archive Advertisement 'They're not a New York-type family or Chicago-type family or Philadelphia-type family that really covets the press.' On Wednesday, Burnstein teamed up with former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino and ex-mob soldier Nove Tocco at an event at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich., to reveal the latest theory to surface about what happened to Hoffa. They claimed Hoffa was whacked by late Detroit mobster Anthony 'Tony Pal' Palazzolo — and the body ground up in a sausage grinder at the former Detroit Sausage Company Palazzolo used for his operations. 9 Anthony 'Tony Pro' Provenzano, a New Jersey-based capo for the Genovese crime family, was one of the reputed mobsters Hoffa was supposed to meet with the day he went missing. ASSOCIATED PRESS The remaining pieces were then dumped in an incinerator of a mob-owned waste disposal business in nearby Hamtramck, Mich., that was destroyed in an arson fire eight months later, the trio claimed. The site is now part of a local jail complex. Other popular theories about Hoffa's demise include: He was whacked on Provenzano's orders, and his body was chopped into little pieces, taken to South Florida and thrown into the Everglades. The FBI never found evidence to support the claim. 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In 2006, the FBI searched the site, once owned by a Teamster official, after a 75-year-old inmate claimed he remembered seeing men using a backhoe to dig a hole there a day after Hoffa disappeared. The FBI brought cadaver dogs and fully demolished the barn – but found zilch. The failed search cost the agency $265,000, including $160,000 to replace the razed barn. Hoffa was abducted by federal marshals and agents and dropped out of an airplane into one of the Great Lakes surrounding Michigan, according to former Hoffa associate Joseph Franco who wrote a book about it. Authorities found Franco's book and claims to be fiction, not fact. He was buried beneath a swimming pool in Hampton Township, Mich. The 2003 tip came from convicted murderer Richard Powell, who told cops Hoffa was buried beneath his former property. Police demolished the pool to dig beneath it, but found no trace of Hoffa. Hoffa's driver Marvin Elkind claimed in the 2011 book 'The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob' that Hoffa's killers buried him beneath the 73-story Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, which is General Motors' headquarters. The claim was rejected by authorities. A group of cold case crime investigators claimed in 2023 they believed Hoffa was buried on the site of the Brewers' old ballpark, Milwaukee County Stadium in Wisconsin. 9 Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran claimed on his deathbed in 2003 that he lured Hoffa to a house in Detroit and shot him twice in the back of the head on mobsters' orders. Key parts of the tale spurred the 2019 hit flick 'The Irishman.' ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement Dan Moldea, a 75-year-old journalist and author of 'The Hoffa Wars' who has written extensively about the case since the ex-Teamster boss went missing, spurred one of the most recent searches for Hoffa in 2021 by providing the feds information he secured from multiple mob sources. Moldea told the FBI he believed Hoffa was buried in a steel drum in an alcove under the Pulaski Skyway, near the site of a former Jersey City landfill. Before the FBI began its search, Moldea and Fox News contracted teams of investigators to use ground-penetrating radar to check for anomalies under the site, such as steel drums. Both tests flagged possible evidence, he said. 9 Investigative journalist Dan Moldea told the FBI his sources said Hoffa was buried in a steel drum in an alcove under the Pulaski Skyway, near the site of a former Jersey City landfill. The FBI conducted a search but Moldea believes they dug in the wrong location. AP Advertisement The scans were then provided to the FBI's Detroit Field Office, but Moldea said that office never shared the information with the FBI's Newark Field Office — and he believes this led to the feds digging in the wrong spot a mere 10 yards away and coming up empty. 'We spoon-fed them this information, so it was tragic the way the whole thing worked out,' Moldea told The Post. He wants to re-examine the suspected burial site, which is now owned by the New Jersey Department of Transportation, but said he's been blocked because the agency claims the area is currently an active work zone for overhead construction on the highway. Burnstein said he has great respect for Moldea's work but believes the murder and body disposal was done locally — not out of state. Advertisement 9 One of the most infamous theories about Hoffa's remains is that they were buried during the construction of the former Giants Stadium under what would become Section 107 by in the field's western end zone. AP 'I think people are making this way more complex than it actually was,' Bernstein said. 'This was a job done by the Detroit mob, and it was probably done within a half hour or 45 minutes.' Besides Hoffa's bid to reclaim the Teamsters' presidency — a title he held from 1959 to 1971 — Burnstein said his sources told him there's another reason mobsters wanted Hoffa dead: He was a 'confidential informant working for the FBI.' 'The rumors were starting to spread on the street in the spring of 75,' he said. Advertisement The FBI said the case remains active but declined to answer questions. 'As the 50th anniversary of Mr. Hoffa's disappearance approaches, the FBI Detroit Field Office remains steadfast in its commitment to pursuing all credible leads,' said Cheyvoryea Gibson, the office's Special Agent in Charge. 'We continue to encourage anyone with information to submit a tip at or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.' 9 Hoffa poses shortly before his appearance on the TV program 'Face the Nation,' on July 26, 1959, in Washington DC. ASSOCIATED PRESS James P. Hoffa, son of the late Teamsters boss, told the Detroit News he doesn't buy that his father's remains were taken out of state, and he denied that his father planned to testify for the feds. He's proud of the 'legacy' his father left behind, but regrets the disappearance became comedy fodder for late-night television and that his mother died in 1980 with a 'broken heart.' 'My father went to a meeting he shouldn't have gone to, and he was murdered,' said the younger Hoffa, 84, who served as Teamsters president from 1998-2022. 'I know there are a lot of theories out there, but we've stopped trying to figure out who did what to whom. 'This is a tragedy our family has had to live with, and we're still hoping to have closure someday.'
