CRIME BLOTTER

'Tis the Season

The week's first, the Post reported, occurred on the evening of Friday, Dec. 17, when a 74-year-old woman was found dancing on air in her Chinatown apartment.

The weekend's second hanging was a bit less private, as 42-year-old former doorman Gjovan Hoti climbed 30 feet up into a tree in a Kew Gardens cemetery, then tied the noose to a sturdy branch.

Investigators called to the scene Sunday morning found a note in his pocket, letting them know it was no accident. His wife and son had left him 10 years ago, but the divorce had been ugly and protracted. He had to leave his job two years ago after a back injury. According to anyone who knew him, he just wasn't a very happy man.

On Monday evening, two teenage boys who compared themselves to (ahem) Thelma and Louise aimed their car for a lamppost in Jersey while driving 100 mph (one survived). That same night, the 30-year-old son of a former Nassau County exec drove his car safely to an empty school parking lot, then shot himself in the head. And on Tuesday afternoon, a 15-year-old in Queens leapt from the roof of an eight-story apartment building.

Sunday evening, a bumbling shoplifter at a Staten Island shopping mall pulled a move that might well be seen as either an incompetent escape attempt or an incompetent suicide bid.

Charlene Thompson was doing a little last-minute Christmas stealing with her 28-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter, according to the Post, when mall security guards saw her stuffing a puffy jacket under her daughter's coat. (Shoplifting Tip #1: If you're stealing something bulky, use the big kid to conceal it. It just works better.)

When the guards stopped her just outside the store and pointed out the obviously stolen jacket, Ms. Thompson panicked and threw herself over the railing, dropping 10 feet into the mall's fountain below.

Then she began to scream, which didn't do much to aid her escape. Her son didn't help matters, either, by wrestling with guards when they tried to grab his mom. She now faces petit larceny charges, while her son is being slapped with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

In a story that will be cited for years to come by parents groups and politicians, 17-year-old Dario Lam was shot and killed by longtime pal Austin Burton, 18, after the two spent most of Saturday playing (presumably violent!) videogames in Flatbush.

In a script the most hamfisted marketing firm in the country would've rejected, Lam, Burton and a couple other friends were playing violent unholy games about killing and hurting, when Burton showed them a real gun that just happened to be lying around. He'd been told, of course, that "it wasn't loaded."

Given how surprised he must've been to learn that it was indeed loaded, one wonders why he pulled the trigger a second time.

He's now being charged with second-degree manslaughter.