Crime Blotter

SUICIDE CLUB This wasn't a big week for proactive-type crimes. Lots of sentences were handed down, hearings were heard and people were arrested for old crimes. But most of the new crimes perpetrated this week were crimes against God.

If it was an accident, he was very lucky. If it was a suicide bid, it was pretty stupid. On Mon., May 3, 39-year-old Ricardo Gonzalez somehow found himself in the Hudson River—right outside a boat-equipped firehouse on W. 12th St. Two firefighters, hearing Gonzalez thrashing about in the rough waters, jumped in to save him. But Gonzalez fought with them and tried to swim away. Makes you wonder why he was doing all that screaming and splashing if he didn't want to be saved.

After 15 minutes, the two men finally subdued Gonzalez, slid him onto a waiting fireboat and took him somewhere for "observation."

Another would-be public suicide was thwarted by firemen on Weds., May 5. An unidentified man crawled over the fence lining a footbridge spanning the Prospect Expressway. Then, using what must've been an awfully heavy (and long!) bootlace, he tied a noose around his neck before tying the loose end onto a beam attached to a highway sign.

Before the exhibitionist could dangle himself above the passing traffic, however, several firefighters and cops appeared on the scene, scaled the same fence and yanked him to safety, despite his feeble protests. He, too, is being observed somewhere.

The mightiest of MTA workers probably couldn't have saved the unidentified man on the uptown side of the York St. platform Monday evening. Around 8, just as the Manhattan-bound F was pulling into the station, Mr. Considerate there decides to take himself a long nap across the tracks. Along them and between them, too.

He got his wish; the station was evacuated, and service was disrupted for several hours as workers jacked the train off the tracks in order to scrape him up.

But as far as suicides that blend tragedy, comedy and pure showmanship are concerned, no one (at least this week) could top 77-year-old Ann York.

Maybe it makes sense. York, according to sources, was a former circus contortionist and a one-time Broadway showgirl, appearing in such musicals as Almost Crazy. She clearly had show biz in her blood, and now her blood is all over the sidewalk of E. 57th St.

In later years, she'd been a professional dogwalker. But as arthritis crippled her feet and legs, she was forced to give that up as well. She became a bitter shut-in, according to neighbors in her East Side apartment building. "She was not very friendly," one of them said of York to the New York Post. "She complained a lot."

Well, they won't have to listen to her complain anymore. At about 9:30 Monday morning, York set up a stepladder next to the window of her 17th-floor apartment. She opened the window and hurled her much-hated aluminum cane to the street below, nearly striking one passer-by and prompting several others to look up. Then she took her final bow.