East End Report: Teen Rescues Drowning Man

Happenings across the East End during the week of June 4.

When 17-year-old Jean Carlos Barrientos heard screams coming from the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday afternoon, he sprung into action.

Admittedly scared, Barrientos remembered the training he had received in East Hampton's junior lifeguard: He told his friend to call 911 and he grabbed two flotation devices that were handy near the on Napeague, where he works as a cabana boy, and headed for the water.

A device that's supposed to inflate when it hits the water, failed, so Barrientos quickly ditched it, carrying instead a red torpedo as he swam through the choppy water toward the drowning man, who he thinks got caught up in a rip current.

Louis Moore Bacon, owner of Robins Island and head of Robins Island Holdings, LLC, will buy an acre of preserved waterfront land in New Suffolk currently in the hands of the preservation group.

The historic 3.4-acre site on Peconic Bay stretches from Captain Marty's Fishing Station to the north to Robins Island offices to the south and includes a deep-water marina and an 1898 building that once housed the Galley Ho restaurant. It is also the site of the first submarine base in the United States.

Zelvhin Galdamez, 5, the child struck by a pickup truck in Riverhead Wednesday night, was "very scared," after the accident his father said Friday morning.

His son, who was expected to be released from the hospital on Thursday, sustained non-life-threatening injuries to his arm and lacerations, Galdamez said. It was unclear whether the child, who is still recuperating, will be released on Friday. 

Rogelio Galdamez, Zelvhin's father, reached by telephone at his son's bedside on Friday, said his son had been walking home with a friend from the park when he was struck by a truck driven by Cornelius M. Trent, 41.

The Suffolk County Board of Elections has denied a nominating petition challenge filed by former Westhampton Beach Trustee and resident Joan Levan, ruling Deputy Mayor Toni-Jo Birk did in fact submit her petitions in time to qualify for the ballot.

Levan had claimed that Birk's petitions were time stamped at 4:46 p.m. which fell after the village's normal business hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

But in the May 15 ruling, the BOE disagreed, saying election law permits Birk up until 5 p.m. to file a petition and that petitions are also accepted if they are mailed and post marked on the day petitions are due.

Ten years after it was formed, Bridgehampton Fire District's Dive Team was formally disbanded recently, despite outcries from its own members and surrounding fire departments.

The Board of Fire Commissioners — after hearing a recommendation from department chiefs — voted unanimously to dissolve the team of five divers and 13 members in total, which had also served on a town-wide rescue team. The commissioners cited high-risk events that are much more often recovery operations, as opposed to rescues.