East End Report: Mom of Murdered Teen Speaks

Happenings across the East End during the week of June 11.

Community Divided Over Canoe Place Inn Project

Lines were drawn between Hampton Bays residents on Tuesday afternoon as they stood to comment during a scoping hearing held on a and adjoining properties, which requires a change of zone action by the Southampton Town Board.

While the hearing was meant to obtain feedback on an environmental study for the project, residents took the opportunity to voice their thoughts on the proposal in general.

Critics argued that the developers of the proposal, cousins Gregg and Mitchell Rechler, are "bribing" the public by agreeing to restore Canoe Place Inn and purchase Pine Barrens credits through the town's  so they can build 40 townhouses on the canal. Those in support said there is a clear public benefit that will result from the project.

World War II buffs and East Hampton Town residents who have long heard the story of the Nazi landing in Amagansett 70 years ago gathered on a rainy night as the for the first time.

The  restoration committee organized a small skit to renact the night John Cullen, a 21-year-old Coast Guardsman, headed out for his patrol on Atlantic Beach and found Nazi spies who had just buried explosives.

Southampton Town Police Lt. James Kiernan's suspension is headed to arbitration, after the Town Board appointed a disciplinary hearing officer Tuesday.

Passed 5-0, the resolution appointing Roger Maher as arbitrator states that Kiernan, whose been , requested a hearing to challenge the disciplinary charged leveled against him by Chief William Wilson. Kiernan has a right to a hearing under the collective bargaining agreement between the town and the Superior Officers Association, the union for the Police Department's top brass.

Under former Chief James Overton, Kiernan, a sergeant at the time, was the commanding officer of the Police Department's now-defunct street crimes unit, which, along with the handling of internal police records, is the subject of an investigation by Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota’s Government Corruption Bureau.

As a result of the DA's inquiry into the unit, drug charges against two prisoners were . One of the now-free men is .

The 16 years since her 17-year-old daughter Curtisha Morning was found murdered, stabbed over 90 times and left near Riverhead High School, have been filled with pain, Viola Morning said on Thursday.

Viola, who has since moved to North Carolina, is back in Riverhead this week for the re-trial of her daughter's alleged murder Kalila Taylor. 

"It's not easy," Morning said outside the Arthur M. Cromarty Court Complex in Riverside, where the trial is being presided over by Judge William Condon. "There's a hole inside of me."

Days after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a new foot-and-mouth disease vaccine that lacks live foot-and-mouth virus — the first of its kind — has gotten license from the federal government to be manufactured and used on animals on the U.S. mainland, 'CBS Sunday Morning' featured a lengthy segment about the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center this past Sunday.