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Alleged Lake George killer dad alludes to ‘rigid' tendencies, ‘feelings of isolation' in corporate bio

Alleged Lake George killer dad alludes to ‘rigid' tendencies, ‘feelings of isolation' in corporate bio

New York Post21-07-2025
Alleged Lake George killer dad Luciano Frattolin once admitted he had to learn to live with his slain daughter's 'messy art projects'' and 'chaotic'' toys because of his obsession with keeping 'perfect order.''
On Frattolin's bio page for his Montreal-based coffee company Gambella Coffee, he alludes to painful hardships he has had to endure, including 'incidences of racism,' 'feelings of isolation' and the death of his father as a teenager.
3 Luciano Frattolin, 45, has been arrested and charged with the murder of his daughter, Melina.
Instagram/Luciano Frattolin
He mentions an 'unfortunate event' in 2019 that he says 'severely affected his well-being' and necessitated a 'long and arduous' road to recovery, too. He did not see elaborate on what happened, although cops said his relationship with his former wife apparently badly soured around that time.
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3 The bio on the accused killer's coffee company website alludes to a number of hardships, including his 'rigid' perfectionistic tendencies.
Gambella Coffee
Frattolin, 45, also speaks glowingly of the 'light of his life,' his daughter, Melina, 9 — whom he now stands accused of murdering — and admits to some 'rigid tendencies' she helped him overcome.
'Melina has taught Luciano to let go of his rigid tendencies to keep everything in 'perfect order' — his love for Melina's messy art projects and chaotic ensemble of toys supersedes his love for a meticulously spotless home,' he wrote.
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Still, despite his obstacles, 'He was left reinvigorated and reconciled the difficulties he faced during his youth by embodying the Nietzschean attitude of, 'That which does not kill him makes him stronger,' ' says the bio, which has since been taken offline.
3 Melina's body was found Sunday afternoon in Ticonderoga, New York, about 30 miles from the Lake George area where she and her dad had been vacationing.
New York State Police
'He readily admits the mistakes of his past life and uses such reminiscences as momentum for doing better.'
Frattolin's Instagram page, where his bio includes the descriptor 'loving father,' is loaded with photos of him and Melina smiling and looking happy together.
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Police say Frattolin called in a bogus kidnapping report hours before her body was recovered in shallow water in Ticonderoga, New York, on Sunday while they were on vacation in the Lake George area some 30 miles away.
Investigators later said there were no indications she had been abducted and that her father's story contained inconsistencies, WRGB reported.
Frattolin, who was born in Ethiopia, was booked into Essex County Jail at 2:04 a.m. Monday and charged with Melina's murder.
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Video taken outside the jail shows him flanked by a pair of New York State Troopers clad head to toe in an all-white jumpsuit and shackled at the wrists and ankles before being led into a police SUV.
-Additional reporting by Anthony Blair
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Legendary Long Island law firm Sullivan-Papain turns 100
Legendary Long Island law firm Sullivan-Papain turns 100

New York Post

time2 hours ago

  • New York Post

Legendary Long Island law firm Sullivan-Papain turns 100

They've pleased the court. A Long Island law firm that changed the world using out-of-the-box thinking on everything from smoking to cars to beer at baseball games is celebrating centenarian status this year. 'Everything that you have grown up with and have taken for granted is because of what's happened in this firm over the last 100 years,' New York State Supreme Court Justice Christopher McGrath told The Post of firm Sullivan-Papain, which has recovered north of $2 billion in settlements in the past decade alone. 4 Sullivan-Papain partners Thomas McManus, Eleni Coffinas, John Nash, Nick Papain (back row left to right) and Bob Sullivan (seated) at the law firm's office in Garden City. Dennis A. Clark The judge cut his teeth with the Garden City-based practice as a 23-year-old under the tutelage of its late 5'2″ skinny founder, Harry Lipsig, who was a giant in the legal world 50-something years ago. 'He was just different. He's a genius — and yet, we'll call him a little quirky at the same time,' McGrath said. 'One time, my job was to meet him at his apartment at seven in the morning. The train got me in late at 7:05, and he said, 'Good afternoon.' ' Lipsig's high standards weren't without reason. He used a mix of sheer brilliance and common sense to change how the world operated; perhaps most notably, starting with how stadiums sold beer 80 years ago, after a man at a New York Giants baseball game got belted in the head with a glass bottle at the old Polo Grounds. 4 Harry Lipsig was a founding partner of the 100-year-old firm. Dennis A. Clark 'The Polo Grounds was saying it wasn't their fault. … 'We can't put a police officer in every other seat. We can't have everybody stop anybody from throwing something down,' ' recalled senior partner Bob Sullivan. During the three-day trial, Lipsig, who passed away in 1989 at age 89, brought a mysterious handheld paper bag into court with him each day and left it sealed on the table. 'When he got to summation, he pulled out a paper cup and he said, 'This is how you stop it.' … That's how that came to be in stadiums all across the country,' Sullivan said. 4 Senior partner Bob Sullivan recalls the creative way Lipsig was able to win a case against the old Polo Grounds stadium. Dennis A. Clark On a case-by-case basis The novel way of thinking that Lipsig was known for — he once won a shark-bite case by proving the victim's hotel wasn't dumping its garbage far enough at sea and drew in the predators — has been passed down generation to generation. New York state recruited Sullivan-Papain in its lawsuit against smoking companies in the late 1990s, which yielded an end to cigarette ads and $25 billion in recovery locally. 'The genius was that we didn't represent the smokers, we represented the nonsmokers,' Sullivan said. 'Your taxes, what you pay for Medicare, Medicaid, for all these people who got sick and were dying of cancer, went through the roof. That was the key point.' 4 Partner Nick Papain was involved in a case that helped make cars safer. Dennis A. Clark Ironically, most of the firm's team on the case was hooked on nicotine. 'Every hour, we would take a 10-minute break so the lawyers could go out and smoke,' said partner Nicholas Papain, a lawyer who led to changes in how cars are built. He was involved in several cases of people who got into accidents by unintentionally hitting the gas rather than the brake when first getting into their cars. Ultimately, the high-volume litigation led to automakers keeping gearshifts locked unless a driver's foot was on the brake. The firm has also branched out into medical malpractice and represented the FDNY for four decades, with partner Eleni Coffinas saying cancer patients often find emotional strength in court victories. Sullivan-Papain has done an estimated $40 million in pro bono work for the families of first responders on 9/11, too. 'I think it speaks to that firm culture, philosophy, that is a big reason why it has been around for 100 years,' said managing partner TJ McManus, who added that it is common for new workers to hear of Lipsig's legend during their first week on the job. 'I think he set certain parameters and a legacy that is followed all the way through to today.'

To dodge federal rule, immigrants moved from Florida jails - and sometimes moved right back
To dodge federal rule, immigrants moved from Florida jails - and sometimes moved right back

Miami Herald

time6 hours ago

  • Miami Herald

To dodge federal rule, immigrants moved from Florida jails - and sometimes moved right back

ORLANDO, Fla. - Four Guatemalan siblings, detained as undocumented immigrants after a traffic stop, spent several days last month at the Orange County Jail before being picked up in a van and driven around for hours. Finally they reached their destination, their attorneys say: Right back at the Orange County Jail. This directionless odyssey - similar to what some other detainees across Florida have faced in recent months – happened because of rules limiting the number of days an undocumented immigrant can be held in a local facility before federal officials must take custody. With the Trump administration's push for "mass deportation" filling federal detention beds, detainees are being transferred from facility to facility because the switch restarts the clock and gives federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents more time to pick them up. Multiple immigration attorneys described the shuffle to the Orlando Sentinel, and law enforcement leaders in Orange and Pinellas County confirmed the practice. But the attorneys say it's a maddening tactic that often leaves them struggling to locate the immigrants, and denies detainees access to family members and due process. Even though his clients - three brothers and a sister - wound up in the same place they started from, Orlando-based immigration attorney Walker Smith said he couldn't find the siblings because their previous inmate numbers were changed upon their return, leaving him and their family unsure of their whereabouts. He said the two youngest siblings in the family, 26 and 18, had valid work permits. "If they're just holding people indefinitely, holding people by sending them from facility to facility, or worse, sending them out of one facility and back to the same one under a different number … It's gaming the system at its finest," Smith said. The youngest brother has since been moved again - this time to Alligator Alcatraz, the state's new detention center in the Everglades. The way a detained immigrant's custody clock works is complicated. Under the Intergovernmental Service Agreement, or IGSA, that governs the relationships between ICE and the handful of Florida jails like Orange County's that temporarily hold detainees, undocumented immigrants without criminal charges can be held up to 72 hours before ICE must come to pick them up. But if the immigrant is arrested for a separate criminal offense, the 72-hour clock may not start until the other offense is charged or dropped - for all arrestees, state law prescribes a two-day time limit for that - or bail is granted and paid. "After the 72-hour period is up, there's no more authority for whatever agency or jail or entity to continue to hold those people," Smith said. "So . . . they should be released." And prior to the Trump administration, immigrants with an ICE hold often were released if time expired with no action. Now, some of them are simply relocated, whether to a different jail, or for a brief ride. It remains unclear how often the scenario occurs. In a July 15 meeting of the Board of County Commissioners, Orange Corrections Chief Louis Quiñones described a shuffle involving "a large amount of individuals" in early July. He was responding to questions from Commissioner Maribel Gomez Cordero, who had been told about the practice by advocates pressuring commissioners to terminate the IGSA with ICE. "Right around the [July 4] holiday, we had a large amount of individuals who were reaching the 72 hours and ICE had to come get those individuals and they were going to attempt to send them to another location," he said. "That did not go as they had planned, so they brought them back to Orange County Corrections." One reason the issue irks some county officials is that it costs about $145 per day to keep somebody in the jail, and the federal government only reimburses Orange County about $88 per day to house detainees. Shuffling people in and out of the jail prolongs their stay and runs up the bill. The county is in the midst of trying to renegotiate its agreement with ICE for a better reimbursement rate, but so far hasn't come to a deal. Quiñones didn't say how many people were impacted by the transfer, and the county didn't make him available for a requested interview with the Orlando Sentinel. But Smith said he was skeptical of Quiñones' description. "He tried to make it seem like it was a one-off," Smith said. "So I was very intrigued that the [Guatemalan] guy that I went to go talk to had also encountered the same situation." Danny Banks, the county's Public Safety Director, also said the shuffle has occurred only as "an isolated incident" so far. "Largely, ICE has been transporting their inmates within the 72-hour timeframe indicated in the IGSA agreement," he said in a text message. However, the Orlando Sentinel has been told of multiple other instances. One of the most elaborate involved Cuban native Michael Borrego Fernandez, who was transported to multiple different facilities before ending up at Alligator Alcatraz, where he has been since July 5. In June, Borrego Fernandez was arrested for violating his release terms after being charged with grand theft for bilking homeowners to pay for swimming pools up front but not finishing the work, which his mother Yaneisy Fernandez Silva said was because he "unwittingly" worked for a businessman operating the scam. Borrego Fernandez, who lived in South Florida, was taken to the Seminole County Jail to serve ten days in jail, she said. Following the completion of his sentence, he was taken to Orange County Jail on an ICE hold, then three days later shuttled to Pinellas County Jail. Three days after that, he was again transported back to Orange County Jail, his mother said. Roughly four days later he called his mother saying he had reached Alligator Alcatraz. Only his calls offered clues that let Fernandez Silva search for her son in jail databases, she said. "It's clear what the counties are doing, they're trying to create a legal loophole to a constitutional obligation to not hold people for more than the 72 hours," said Mich Gonzalez, a South Florida-based immigration attorney who called the transfers "alarming." Gonzalez said conditions for inmates who move around are different than for those housed in a single jail. "They're shackled, they're handcuffed, sometimes they're also waist-chained," Gonzalez said. "They're not provided proper food like when they're in custody at a county jail, where there are … general rules that you're going to get three meals a day and access to water. But when you're being transported and transferred, that goes out the window." In June, a Mexican man was arrested while his boss, a U.S. citizen, was driving him and his brother to a construction site. Both were passengers in the car and both had permits to work in the U.S., said the wife of one of the brothers. She spoke with the Sentinel on the condition of anonymity as she worries her comments could make her a target of immigration authorities. For weeks after her husband's arrest she did not know where he was. He would call from an Orange County number but he did not appear in the correction system's database. He told his wife he was put into a van and taken somewhere, but returned the next day to Orange County Jail. "I didn't hear from him for three days … I was so scared," She said in Spanish. "He spent so much time in Orange County Jail that when he returned he knew it was the same place." Advocates for the family met with officials at Orange County Corrections in early July to help find him. Six hours later, he was finally located in a county jail cell, they said. He had been given a different inmate number upon his return, which contributed to the confusion. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri confirmed there has been some shuffling involving his facility but defended it, saying it stems from "a capacity issue" that can prevent detention centers from accepting detainees when their 72-hour clock ticks down. "If the transportation system is overloaded or there's no room at Krome … that's when it backs up and they have to put them into the IGSA jails" such as Orange, Gualtieri said. Gualtieri serves on Florida's Immigration Enforcement Council, which has sounded an alarm that federal detention space can't keep up with the pace at which Florida law enforcement agencies are arresting undocumented immigrants. The board has called on the federal government to allow more local jails to house detainees, rather than send them to the seven jails in Florida with IGSA agreements while they await ICE detention. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.

Man arrested after crashing vehicle into RCMP Quebec headquarters
Man arrested after crashing vehicle into RCMP Quebec headquarters

Yahoo

time19 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Man arrested after crashing vehicle into RCMP Quebec headquarters

Montreal police are investigating after they say a man deliberately crashed his vehicle into the the Royal Canadian Mounted Police divisional headquarters on Dorchester Boulevard, in Westmount, west of downtown. Montreal police spokesperson Jean-Pierre Brabant said a 911 call was made reporting a crash at the main entrance of the building around 9:25 a.m. The driver of the vehicle, a 44-year-old man, was arrested but taken to hospital to be treated for non-life threatening injuries suffered in the crash. Brabant said the driver was first seen approaching the building on foot, but eventually got into his vehicle and drove "slowly" but at a constant speed, into the entrance. Police believe the driver may have been suffering from mental health issues and said he was possibly in a state of crisis. While damage to the building was considerable with glass being shattered at the entrance, Brabant said that two RCMP officers who were inside at the time were not injured. Investigators will be questioning the driver as soon as his health allows.

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