Nate Schweber

They were prepared to commemorate their friend Alanche Del Orbe’s 15th birthday, and decided to still do so, even amid the shocking and tragic news: Fewer than 20 hours earlier, Alanche had been found dead in his home, four stories above where the teenagers gathered.

“He was only 14, he was only a little kid,” said an anguished friend, Randy Marquez, 15.

The police report of his death suggested an unthinkable horror. Alanche was found with severe head trauma, most likely beaten. His mother, Marisol Ortiz, 51, was found the same way. After a family member reportedly found them and called 911 at 3:38 p.m. Sunday, emergency medical personnel pronounced them dead at the scene.

A neighbor upstairs, Eskarliny Santiago, 20, heard the reaction when the bodies were found.

“It was a scream, really loud, like when you’re getting hit,” she said.

Police officials said they were still looking for a suspect.

The sparse and grisly details released by the police stood in jarring contrast to the color photos of Alanche that his friends taped onto the building’s exterior. In one, he mugs in a fake mustache while wearing his jacket from his high school, the Academy for Language and Technology. In another, he strikes a pose in dress clothes. In another, he hikes through a verdant forest with a backpack.

“He was just a happy kid, he liked to joke and make everybody laugh,” Zaimari Trinidad, 15, said. “It’s so hard what happened to him.”

As the friends spoke, two police officers escorted a pair of tearful women into the apartment; the women identified themselves as family members but declined to comment. The building superintendent, Jose Feliciano, 69, said Alanche and his mother had moved from the Dominican Republic around four years ago. He called them “good people” with whom he never had an issue.

One of Alanche’s closest friends, Diannibel Cedano, 15, said he had confided to her last week that there was trouble over a new man his mother began seeing. She recalled that he had told her as he accompanied her home in a cab; he was making sure she arrived safe before walking to his own home.

“His mom got a boyfriend and he had to leave to his sister’s house,” Diannibel said. “It’s sad because he felt his mother never cared about him.”

Police officials would not confirm multiple news media reports that they were looking for the mother’s boyfriend, who was said to be an ex-convict.

Outside the building’s front door, the regiments of red and white votive candles grew as 10 “Happy Birthday” balloons clattered in the stiff wind.

Friends remembered Alanche as a baseball nut whose hero was Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge. He dreamed of being just like him one day. They recalled his love of playing baseball, through a group called Grand Slam Foundation, or simpler everyday things like riding his bicycle, dancing and eating Dominican food. He always liked to joke and make sure everyone around him had a good time, they said.

Bianell De La Cruz, a teacher at the Academy for Language and Technology, said he immediately dropped everything when a student emailed him the news, rushing to the birthday party turned memorial with a school shirt for the students to sign in tribute. He said Alanche won a school award last year for student improvement.

“He was a good student, a good kid; we’re all going to miss him,” he said.

Another friend, Randy Marquez, said he had looked forward to telling Alanche on Monday that for his birthday his buddies were taking him to a Yankees game this spring.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said, staring at the candles blowing out. “Not at all.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/nyregion/bronx-murders-mother-son.html" id="4babe2f0-606f-39dc-a4a0-148ab876fb0f">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — The group of teenagers huddled in a cold wind on East 185th Street in the Bronx on Monday, carrying with them the same items they had planned the day before to bring: shiny balloons saying “It’s Your Birthday” and “Feliz Cumpleaños,” and a chocolate cake.

'He Was Only 14': A Sad Birthday Remembrance for a Boy, Slain With His Mother

<h1>NEW YORK — Some bet as much as $200. Others wager as little as breakfast or a beer. The real prize — bragging rights and status — goes to the owner of the bird that sings the most vigorously during the competitions that kick off at dawn on Sundays in parks in Brooklyn and Queens.</h1>

The male chestnut-bellied seed finches are judged on how fast, and how long, they sing when held beside each other in cages, stimulating their instinct to establish dominance.

But this avian twist on “America’s Got Talent” has also fueled an illegal cottage industry: the smuggling of finches into the United States from South America.

Last week, a 39-year-old Connecticut man was charged in federal court in Brooklyn with smuggling nearly three dozen finches from Guyana into the country through Kennedy Airport. The 34 birds were nestled into plastic hair curlers and placed in carry-on luggage, which was selected for a spot inspection, according to court records.

He’s the fourth man arrested in New York on similar charges since April 2018, in what officials said is indicative of the persistent illegal smuggling of the tiny songbirds that can sell for $3,000 in New York City. The value of a champion finch can increase to as much as $5,000, prosecutors said. The man charged last Monday, Francis Gurahoo, of East Hartford, Connecticut, expected to earn about $100,000 from the sale of the birds, prosecutors said.

Gurahoo was freed on a $25,000 bond, posted by his uncle, who lives in Queens and told the judge he is originally from Guyana. Gurahoo’s lawyer, Eric Pack, had no comment.

Many of the birds are captured in the wild in Guyana, experts said, lured into traps with birdsong and seeds. So far this year, agents have discovered 326 songbirds being smuggled through 16 major airports across the nation, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Last year, agents confiscated 2,117, records show.

The contests, known colloquially as “bird races,” are especially common in Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto Park in Brooklyn.

“This is like a sport from back home, “ said Ray Harinarain, a bird importer who lives in the Cypress Hills neighborhood of Brooklyn. “People from Guyana move here and bring their traditions.”

Champion birds bestow status on their owners and can increase the value of the finch — “like a racehorse,” Harinarain said.

Under federal law, transported birds are quarantined for 30 days to ensure they do not carry avian flu or Newcastle disease, which can infect humans and domestic poultry, said Paul Calle, chief veterinarian and vice president of health programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society. That inconvenience, coupled with a superstition that wild birds are better singers than birds bred in captivity, feeds the market for smuggling.

“Some people just prefer to smuggle,” Harinarain said.

“It’s an underground thing,” he added. “People don’t want to talk about it.”

All 34 birds discovered last week were alive and placed in the custody of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has regulations that allow for their return, if feasible, to Guyana.

The manner in which the finches are often smuggled — with no protection from extreme temperatures, no food or water and limited mobility — creates stress, making the animals more susceptible to shedding any virus or parasite they might be carrying.

“With a multibillion-dollar U.S. poultry industry, there’s a lot at stake and a lot at risk if they’re moving animals like this,” Calle said. “It’s a terrible thing.”

Though chestnut-bellied seed finches, with obsidian-colored wings and rusty breasts like robins, are not a threatened species, their illegal importation also poses ecological risks.

The finches’ robust numbers in their native region could decline to the point of collapse, as happened around the turn of the 20th century in North America with the once-ubiquitous, now-extinct passenger pigeon, said Susan Elbin, director of conservation and science at New York City Audubon.

Or, just as European starlings were introduced with good intentions into Central Park in the 1890s, only to quickly spread across the continent, displacing multitudes of native birds, exotic animals run the risk of establishing themselves and becoming a harmful invasive species.

“The problem is: They could die out, or they could do well,” Elbin said.

Donald Bruning, an ornithologist who worked at the Bronx Zoo for decades, said smuggling undermines the businesses of legitimate breeders. And the mortality rate for animals brought into the country illegally is abnormally high, he said.

He also noted that the practice may be completely unnecessary: There are far better ways, he said, to groom a champion finch than by plundering wild populations.

Baby finches, he said, learn to sing by imitation. Bruning, who was instrumental in the passage of the Wild Bird Conservation Act of 1992 that safeguards exotic bird species from being harmed by international trade, suggested competitors record the songs of champion birds and play them for chicks raised legally in captivity.

“That would solve the whole problem,” Bruning said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/nyregion/finches-smuggled-jfk-airport.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Bird-singing contests in New York fuel illegal smuggling of finches

The male chestnut-bellied seed finches are judged on how fast, and how long, they sing when held beside each other in cages, stimulating their instinct to establish dominance.

<h1>NEW YORK — The group of teenagers huddled in a cold wind on East 185th Street in the Bronx on Monday, carrying with them the same items they had planned the day before to bring: shiny balloons saying “It’s Your Birthday” and “Feliz Cumpleaños,” and a chocolate cake.</h1>

Police officials said a man who was a person of interest and wanted for questioning in the case, Hector Cruz, was struck and killed by a train early Sunday at the Hartsdale Metro-North Railroad station in Westchester.

This article originally appeared in <a id="b25111c8-6bd2-48dc-bdf2-5456575e71f0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/nyregion/bronx-murders-mother-son.html">The New York Times</a>.

“He was only 14, he was only a little kid,” said an anguished friend, Randy Marquez, 15.

'He was only 14': A sad birthday remembrance for a boy, slain with his mother

<h1>TRENTON, N.J. — Every weekday, from the time when the sun starts to sink over the bridge that reads “Trenton Makes The World Takes” until long after the bustling downtown of New Jersey’s capital city has grown dark and empty, Rosy Herera scrubs floors, shines sinks and polishes sticky stains off conference tables. She is a custodian and a minimum-wage worker.</h1>

When Herera, 50, who provides for four children and two grandchildren, learned last week that lawmakers had agreed to gradually raise the wage from the current rate of $8.85 to $15 by 2024, she smiled broadly and looked up while clasping her hands in prayer.

“Oh, thank you,” she said outside her workplace on East Front Street. “It’s been too much work, not enough money.”

In the fry kitchens, discount stores, trash collection sites and parking garages of this city, where everyday life can feel distant from government buildings where more affluent people make the state’s laws, news of the minimum wage increase was greeted less with cries of euphoria than sighs of relief.

“I’m barely making it,” said Unique Gardner, 29, a mother of six who is an assistant manager at the Family Dollar on East State Street. “This, this will bring me closer. I’m grateful for it.”

Gardner, who said she started at minimum wage a year ago, now earns $10 an hour, which would be the state minimum starting July 1, under an agreement reached Thursday by Gov. Philip D. Murphy and legislative leaders. Starting in January 2020, the minimum wage would rise to $11; from there, it would increase a dollar a year until it hits $15. With Democrats in control of both houses of the New Jersey Legislature, the proposal is certain to pass.

In 2013, after former Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a minimum-wage increase, voters robustly approved a constitutional amendment raising the wage by $1 from $7.25 to $8.25. Since then, it has risen by 60 cents. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25, and New Jersey’s new plan puts it at the vanguard among states lifting the wage floor, along with California, New York and Massachusetts.

Gardner, the sole breadwinner in her house, often works double shifts to make her $825 monthly rent. She said the promise of a raise allows her to dream: of shopping for her children somewhere besides where she works, of buying a car so she doesn’t have to carry sacks of clothes to the laundromat, of one day, maybe, owning a home.

Andre Kirk, 41, who works full time as a booth attendant in a parking garage, cannot wait to earn $10 an hour. The apartment in town he shares with his 7-year-old son, Markis, and the boy’s mother costs $980 a month. When his raise comes, he plans to lavish it on Markis, taking him bowling and to the movies and ordering him his favorite pineapple pizza.

“It’s good for my boy,” he said. “It’s about time.”

At the McDonald’s in the train station, a minimum-wage earner, Zach David, said in between filling milkshakes and French fry orders that he will invest his higher paychecks in his future.

“I like to save for something I need, like a house, a car, feed my kids if I have some,” said David, 24, who is paying his way through school to be an HVAC repairman. “I’m long term; I’m not one of these sit-here-and-buy-sneakers guys.”

Sandy Wang, 54, the manager of busy Po Po No. 1 Chinese restaurant, said that she expected to have to increase her prices slightly if her restaurant is forced to pay its workers more. No worries, she said, because she expects Trentonians to use some of the extra dollars in their pockets to buy food.

“Then people come in and spend money,” she said dunking a basket into a fryer. “It’s OK to me.”

Wrestling dumpsters full of garbage from office buildings, Roni Rodas, who works with Herera and like her, comes from Guatemala, said in Spanish that the minimum wage jump would be such a boon for him he almost could not believe it. The $8.60 an hour he made during all of 2018 — “demasiado poquito,” too little, he said — barely paid for a room in a $1,200-per-month four-bedroom house that he shares with three other men. Standing beside Herera, who rents a $1,500-per-month house for her family of seven, he said with his raise he would make sure his rent is paid, and then buy food, so he has enough to eat.

“Not a lot of money he have now,” said Herera, who was wearing Rodas’ jacket after he saw her shivering and gave it to her.

Najah Jones, 20, a clerk at the Family Dollar store, said she would pay down her credit card debt to rebuild her credit. Her mother, she said, fixed her credit status and was able to lease a pretzel stand to manage inside a Walmart. Jones said she wanted to emulate her and become something she dreams of being: a boss.

She said she is in favor of the wage proposal but wished lawmakers would speed up the rollout. “Of course, it’s a good idea,” she said, making change for a man buying towels. “They should make it $15 now.”

But the proposed new law was not met with universal praise. Celoi Carr, 18, a barista at Starbucks who makes $10 an hour, said she saw it as a demotion.

“I would go from making a little above minimum wage to minimum wage,” she said.

Joseph Festa, 83, a barber who has worked all his life in Trenton, said that if minimum-wage earners want to make more money, they should either get better at their jobs or get a second job.

“You want a crop, you got to plant that seed,” he said.

From the corner of the barbershop, a customer who said he had worked minimum wage jobs shook his head.

This article originally appeared in <a id="aa422d4f-d6f9-4001-ac6c-d2877eb3d109" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/nyregion/new-jersey-minimum-wage.html">The New York Times</a>.

$15 an Hour? New Jersey Minimum-Wage Workers Say It's About Time

When Herera, 50, who provides for four children and two grandchildren, learned last week that lawmakers had agreed to gradually raise the wage from the current rate of $8.85 to $15 by 2024, she smiled broadly and looked up while clasping her hands in prayer.

$15 an hour? New Jersey minimum-wage workers say it's about time

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Nate Schweber

Articles written by the author

'He Was Only 14': A Sad Birthday Remembrance for a Boy, Slain With His Mother

Bird-singing contests in New York fuel illegal smuggling of finches

'He was only 14': A sad birthday remembrance for a boy, slain with his mother

$15 an hour? New Jersey minimum-wage workers say it's about time