Beware the Ides of March. Seriously.

Beware the Ides of March. Seriously. In the early hours of Monday, March 15, 26-year-old Luis Castillo of the Bronx beat up his girlfriend after the pair got into an argument. The police were called, and Castillo ducked out a back window to get away. After cops arrived and interviewed his girlfriend, they canvassed the neighborhood but could find no sign of the man.

Three hours later, the superintendent of the building where Castillo lived called to report that he'd just discovered a body in the alley behind the apartment complex, seven stories beneath Castillo's window.

The days just prior to St. Pat's were tough ones for local firefighters. Not only was Michael Silvestri indicted for that whole chair incident, but three others were arrested for drunk driving in three separate incidents. (To be fair, one of them wasn't actually drunk?he just acted like he was.)

Victor Alexandria of Staten Island was issued a summons on March 15 after he decided to take his pets for a stroll in Central Park. That he came so close to a playground, and that his pets included a caiman and a python probably led to all the trouble.

An animal control officer on the scene was quoted as saying, sagely, "I can't understand how someone can walk through the park in broad daylight with a caiman and a snake just a week after another New Yorker had his monkeys taken away from him."

Later that same night, an MTA bus driver in the Bronx took her last passenger exactly where he wanted to get off, but he beat her up anyway.

On the morning of March 16, William Capers' girlfriend ran out of their Brooklyn apartment to call the cops after he started beating her. Capers, meanwhile, grabbed their two children and some other kid and barricaded himself in the apartment.

An hour and a half later, the children unlocked the door and told the officers that their daddy had ducked out the back window. Perhaps remembering the Castillo story, they figured it might be best if they took a look for themselves. That's when they found Capers hiding in a closet like a big dummy.

At around 7:30 on the morning of March 17, Kensington resident Tamina Dozter got into an argument with her boyfriend over money. To clarify a point, she grabbed the handy machete and hacked him a good one, nearly severing one of his fingers. We're left wondering yet again why it is that so many people keep machetes around the house. Leads to nothing but trouble.

And in the crime of the week, two Brooklyn men proved once again that it's important to take advantage of those little opportunities life presents you with sometimes.

The three security guards who'd been riding in the armored van all decided to go into the grocery store together to try and fix the store's broken ATM. Not only did they leave the van unattended, they also left the three cash bags (containing $30,000 each) sitting in the back in plain view.

The windows on those armored cars, see, are easier to break than you might imagine.