Looters Arrested in Post-Storm Spree

Looters arrested in post-superstorm spree While looting is nowhere near the levels seen after Katrina or Irene, the New York area has had its share. Numbers

While nowhere near post-Hurricane Katrina or Tropical Storm Irene levels, the New York area has had its share of looting in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy.

According to New York Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne, four women in Far Rockaway, Queens, were arrested Monday after allegedly breaking into a Radio Shack. According to Browne, the women, who ranged in age from 16 to 49, might have been store employees. Radio Shack did not respond to ABC News' request for comment.

Superstorm Sandy: Full Coverage

On Wednesday, 18 people were arrested for rifling through a Key Foods in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Two men and a woman were arrested for allegedly robbing a BP gas station, and police arrested six people for allegedly looting a liquor store in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, the New York Police Department confirmed in an email to ABC News.

In Manhattan, four men ages 18 to 30 were arrested and charged with burglary after breaking into Kixclusive, a sneaker store at 288 Mulberry Street on the Lower East Side. The store had been burglarized during the height of the storm Monday, boarded up with a piece of plywood and locked. Burglars allegedly made off with 30 pairs of sneakers worth $30,000, about $1,000 a pair, according to the NYPD.

Some looters even posed as Con Edison workers to get inside homes, the New York Postreported.

"This morning when they told us the water receded, I walked back to the house to feed [my pets]," Eric Martine, a 33-year-old taxi cab driver who lives in Brooklyn's Gerritsen Beach, told the Post. "Guys were looting, pretending they were Con Ed and holding people up. It was sick."

Some people have apparently broadcast their loot and looting messages on Twitter - such as the tweeter who posted an image of a boarded-up house with the words "Please loot, I love to shoot" spray-painted across the doorway. Other photos of people with "stolen goods" have been posted on Twitter with the hashtag #sandylootcrew.

But Twitter would not reveal the identity of a suspected ex-Occupy Wall Street protester who had encouraged looting in downtown Manhattan, where there was no power, according to the New York Post. Browne told the Post that Twitter's decision was "not civic-minded, but not surprising either." Twitter did not respond to requests for comment from ABC News.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has said there had been no reports of looting in his state. And Newark Mayor Cory Booker tweeted that his city was crime-free: "Police have reported ZERO looting or crimes of opportunity in Newark. And ceaseless reports of acts of kindness abound everywhere #Gratitude."

Meanwhile, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz urged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to send National Guard troops to Brooklyn to help out. "All of our resources have been stretched to the limit, but in the name of public safety we need to send more National Guard personnel," Markowitz said Wednesday in a statement.

Browne said there had been no murders in New York City since the onset of the storm Monday, but there had been 40 storm-related deaths. Nationwide, the death toll from Sandy has surpassed 90, according to The Associated Press. As of Friday morning, 3,628,739 customers were still without power in the affected states, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Forecasting firm Eqecat estimates that Sandy may have caused between $30 billion and $50 billion in economic losses, including property damage, lost business and extra living expenses. Katrina's costs in 2005 were estimated to be $108 billion-about $128 billion in today's dollars.

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As cold snap looms, Sandy sets NY up for a new fuel crisis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Northeast residents lucky enough to have a roof after Hurricane Sandy struck now face a new problem: a heating oil shortage and widespread power outages mean some homes may go cold as the weather turns wintry.

A cold snap in the New York City area - with daily low temperatures set to drop into the upper 30s Fahrenheit (2-4 degrees Celsius) early next week - is raising concerns that residents of the storm-stricken areas of New York, New Jersey or Connecticut could be left without heat as they recover from one of the worst storms in U.S. history.

Some New York area heating oil distributors have already been forced to ration supplies. The fuel is used in nearly 5.8 million homes in the Northeast, the world's largest heating oil market. In some storm hit areas, distribution has nearly collapsed.

Heating oil is usually dispatched in fleets of tanker trucks to boiler rooms in thousands of residential buildings and businesses. But on Friday, supplies were dwindling at many distribution centers in New York City and parts of New Jersey.

In addition, nearly 3.5 million homes and business were without power on Friday along the East Coast. While that number will likely diminish by next week, those without power that use heating oil will have limited options to stave off the cold.

Government attempts to alleviate the shortage by releasing strategic reserves of heating oil are unlikely to provide much relief, given the scope of the problem facing distributors.

Concerns are compounded by forecasts for unseasonably cold weather. In New York City, temperatures are expected to dip to between 3 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit below average for early November, said Bradley Harvey, meteorologist at MDA Information Systems in Maryland.

In the industrial Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn on Friday, heating oil distributors who typically supply buildings across the city said they were nearly out of fuel and had no idea when new supplies would arrive.

Some of the region's fuel terminals which offload products from tankers and barges have no power, and at least two important oil refineries in New Jersey remain idled after the storm flooded the plants this week.

"This is the last of it," said Nick DeMaria, a manager at Bayside Fuel Oil Depot in Brooklyn, whose fuel supply was dwindling. "I've got a line of trucks down the block and they're not getting anything. When it gets cold, people are going to need their heat."

News that the U.S. government will release about 48,000 barrels of ultra low sulfur diesel from its Northeast emergency heating oil reserve in an effort will likely help compensate for increased diesel demand due to emergency response efforts.

But it is only equivalent to 8 hours of New York State's peak winter heating oil consumption, according to Reuters calculations.

To be sure, there were signs that a heating crunch could be short-lived. New York Harbor, the region's fuel importing hub, received its first gasoline barge on Friday morning, and the federal government issued a temporary waiver of the shipping Jones Act, to allow foreign-flagged tankers take fuel from the U.S. Gulf Coast to the harbor.

Meanwhile, electric utilities made inroads to restore power to residents in some areas, and a mild October has likely left many buildings with stores of heating fuel as they wait for normal distribution to resume.

But while activities have restarted in New York Harbor - which has a tank capacity to store up to 75 million barrels of oil products - logistical hurdles still plague the region.

In Brooklyn, Bayside has not been able to schedule new deliveries of heating fuel to its depot, due to storm-related damages to the bridges over small waterways that connect New York Harbor to Brooklyn, DeMaria said.

A few blocks away, at the offices of fuel distributor Statewide Oil and Heating, a small crew of workers were attending to phones that were ringing off the hook. Statewide was informing customers it would have to ration heating oil deliveries to 100 gallons per building.

"There's no heating oil around," said Vincent Savino, the president of Statewide, which usually supplies some 2,000 buildings across New York City.

"I don't know how much fuel we have left: maybe a day or two," Savino said.

Even before Sandy, heating oil supplies in the East Coast region were unseasonably low. Distillate stocks, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, stood at 45 percent below their 5-year average along the East Coast in the week to October 12, according to U.S. government figures. That was the lowest level since mid-2008.

In addition, it was unclear when two New Jersey refineries shuttered by Sandy, Phillips 66's 238,000 barrel per day Bayway plant and Hess Corp's 70,000 barrel per day facility, would resume operations.

But in the more immediate term, the biggest problem could finding fuel for delivery trucks, as many gasoline stations have been left dry or without power.

Joan Clune, who helps to run the Sprague Oil Service distribution center in Matawan, New Jersey, said it was already running low on truck fuel and wasn't sure when new supplies would become available. Sprague said she was still able to deliver to customers, including supplying kerosene for lamps portable stoves and some home heating devices, for now.

"We can't even get heating oil supplies right now beyond what we still have in our trucks," Clune said.

(Reporting by Edward McAllister and Joshua Schneyer; Editing by Richard Chang)

Thousands of bugs invade an Ewa neighborhood

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Bugs have invaded an Ewa neighborhood by the thousands.

Residents say it's a problem that's been going on for the past month, and alerted KHON2's Action Line Department for help.

They're creepy...

"It's nasty!"

...they're crawly...

"They're gross!"

...and this isn't a Halloween trick.

"An infestation all over the place."

Dondra Ozaki first noticed the bugs a month ago.

"I came home one day and they were on the front of the house."

She lives at the end of Naina Place in Ewa by Gentry.

"They're actually crawling in from that way and coming in this way."

In fact, she says pretty much all the homes near this empty lot have the same problem.

"There are armies of 'em."

Alex Stoesser lives across of Dondra.

"It's just frustrating, nothing kills 'em."

"How many cockroaches would you say come every night?" "Thousands."

Dondra took these pictures just last week.

Enough to give you, or at least me, the heebie jeebies.

An entomologist told her they're pacific beetle roaches.

Dondra hired an exterminator, and even sprays her yard daily with pesticide.

"So you get up in the morning, you sweep, you try to lysol or clean off all the driveways and walkways. And when you come home there's even more."

It's been a never ending cycle for the past month. Here's what her neighbor collected in just one day.

"I don't understand why there's so many."

Dondra has lived here for twelve years, and never thought twice about living next to this empty lot.

"That land, as far as I understand, has been set aside as a water runoff area in case of flooding."

She says the bugs appear to be attracted to water in their yards, and even in their homes.

She has no idea why the sudden infestation.

"I just want someone to come out and help us."

A Gentry Homes spokesman says they've hired a pest control company to treat the area behind the homes. And so far, they've treated the area three times.

But residents say the bugs still appear to be winning this war.

"I cannot believe how many roaches are here."

Gentry also said they plan to clean up the streets this week, and will work with the homeowners and pest control company to resolve this situation.

If you have any consumer concerns, contact our KHON2 Action Line Department. Volunteers will take your calls Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. You can also email your concerns to actionline@khon2.com.

Pastor charged with killing fiancee's daughter

In this undated photo provided by the Isabella County, Mich., Sheriffs Department, Rebekah Gay is shown. John D. White, a central Michigan pastor accused of beating and strangling Gay to fulfill a sexual fantasy was engaged to the Gay's mother, says Donna Houghton, a longtime member of Christ Community Fellowship, near Mount Pleasant. White was arraigned Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012 on first-degree murder charges. White told investigators he repeatedly struck Gay's head with a mallet then strangled her with a zip tie at her mobile home. He said he stripped her but does not remember if he carried out his fantasy of having sex with Gay's dead body. (AP Photo/Isabella County Sheriffs Department)

This booking photo provided by the Isabella County Sheriff's Department shows John D. White. White was arraigned Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012, in Mount Pleasant, Mich., on first-degree murder charges and ordered jailed without bond. The 55-year-old ex-convict has confessed to beating and strangling a 24-year-old neighbor as part of a sexual fantasy, hiding her naked body and then returning to her central Michigan trailer home and helping her 3-year-old son get costumed for Halloween, authorities said Thursday. (AP Photo/Isabella County Sheriff's Department)

BROOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — As police frantically worked to figure out how his fiancée's 24-year-old daughter had vanished, a Michigan pastor who had turned to God to shed his violent past went to his flock with a request: pray for her.

But all along, authorities say, he knew the sordid truth about where the young mother was.

The pastor, ex-convict John D. White, later confessed to killing Rebekah Gay to fulfill a fantasy of necrophilia, police said Friday. White drank four or five beers before going to the woman's mobile home and repeatedly striking her head with a mallet and strangling her with a zip tie, according to court documents.

Police said White stripped her dead body but does not remember if he carried out his sexual fantasy. After dumping the body early Wednesday, he returned to Gay's home and dressed her 3-year-old son in his Halloween costume, then later dropped him off with the boy's father.

"He kept saying he's a bad person, he's a pastor, he felt bad for the people in his church. ... I don't recall him bring real remorseful at all with regard to the victim or anything else," Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski told The Associated Press.

"He just basically said he was attracted to her, thought she was a very cute girl. It's a crazy, tragic situation," the sheriff added.

The case shocked the pastor's roughly 14-member congregation and raised questions about how a man who had found religion after a criminal past could return to his dark past.

White was in jail without bond Friday, a day after he was charged with first-degree murder in Gay's death in a rural area in Isabella County, 85 miles northwest of Lansing. The 55-year-old has asked for a court-appointed attorney.

White was engaged to Gay's mother and regularly watched her young son while she worked, said Donna Houghton, a church elder who had a role in hiring White three years ago to be pastor at Christ Community Fellowship. Church members, she said, were "absolutely floored" by the allegations.

"I protested his innocence until I had the absolute news that he confessed. Then he had no leg to stand on," she told the AP.

Before his arrest Thursday, White called Houghton to ask that she contact other church members and start a prayer chain for Gay, who still was missing at the time.

"He was pretty shook up. He said the police were giving him a hard time," Houghton said.

White confessed that day after being told the woman's body was likely to deteriorate in the cold, wet weather, Mioduszewski said. He said his fantasy had been fueled by pornographic videos.

Houghton said the congregation was aware of White's criminal past when he joined the church. He was released from prison in 2007, after serving nearly 12 years for manslaughter in the death of a 26-year-old woman in Kalamazoo County, according to the Michigan Corrections Department.

He had previously been sentenced to probation for choking and stabbing a 17-year-old Battle Creek girl in 1981.

"He was absolutely contrite," said Houghton, 76. "All kinds of people turn around and meet the Lord and they are a different person. He was doing a lot of good in the community. ... He was doing a lot of good and Satan did not want him doing good and Satan got to him."

She said White got on her roof and cleaned her neglected gutters last week, a chore that inspired his Sunday talk. She recalled him saying during that sermon that "we need to check closely the seeds we sprout in ourselves. Nothing can be hidden from God."

At the trailer park on Friday, pictures of pumpkins and other Halloween decorations were still on Gay's home. Park resident Matt Brown said White regularly cut through his yard to visit Gay's trailer that was one street away.

Brown, 21, said White seemed to have scratches on his face when he told residents Wednesday that Gay was missing and that her car had been found outside a bar.

"It looked like he was in a struggle," Brown recalled.

Charles Kenworthy, another resident of the park about 11 miles west of Mount Pleasant, said the killing so close was "just scary."

"I would think they'd want to look into different people and their background before they let somebody live here," the 53-year-old said.

___

White reported from Detroit. AP News Researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.