New York Woman Charged in Connection With Ambush of Firefighters

William Spengler had picked out the semiautomatic rifle and shotgun used in the ambush and went to the sporting goods store with the neighbor when she bought them for him, U.S. Attorney William Hochul said.

The neighbor, Dawn Nguyen of Rochester, was arrested Friday. She faces a federal charge of knowingly making a false statement for signing a form indicating she would be the legal owner of the guns, Hochul said. She also was charged with a state count of filing a falsified business record, State Police Senior Investigator James Newell said.

Shortly before her arrest, Nguyen told The Associated Press that she didn't want to talk about Spengler. A number listed in the name of her lawyer, David Palmiere, was disconnected.

The charges stem from the purchase of an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun that Spengler had with him Monday when firefighters Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka were gunned down. Three other people were wounded before the 62-year-old Spengler killed himself. He also had a .38-caliber revolver, but Nguyen is not connected to that gun, Newell said.

Police used the serial numbers on the rifle and shotgun, which were purchased on June 6, 2010, to trace them to Nguyen, Hochul said.

"She told the seller of these guns, Gander Mountain in Henrietta, N.Y., that she was to be the true owner and buyer of the guns instead of William Spengler," he said. "It is absolutely against federal law to provide any materially false information related to the acquisition of firearms."

"It is sometimes referred to acting as a straw purchaser and that is exactly what today's complaint alleges," he said.

The federal charges carry a maximum penalty of ten years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000 or both.

During an interview late on Christmas Eve, Nguyen told police she had bought the guns for personal protection and that they were stolen from her vehicle, though she never reported the guns stolen.

The day after the shootings, Nguyen texted an off-duty Monroe County Sheriff's deputy with references to the killings. She later called the deputy and admitted she bought the guns for Spengler, police said.

That information was consistent with a suicide note found near Spengler's body after he killed himself.

Nguyen and her mother, Dawn Welsher, lived next door to Spengler in 2008. On Wednesday and again on Friday, she answered her cellphone and said she didn't want to discuss Spengler. Her brother, Steven Nguyen, told the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper of Rochester that Spengler stole the guns from Dawn Nguyen.

Spengler set a car on fire and touched off an inferno in his Webster home on a strip of land along the Lake Ontario shore, took up a sniper's position and opened fire on the first firefighters to arrive at about 5:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve, authorities said. He wounded two other firefighters and an off-duty police officer who was on his way to work.

A Webster police officer who had accompanied the firefighters shot back at Spengler with a rifle in a brief exchange of gunfire before the gunman killed himself.

Spengler spent 17 years in prison for killing his grandmother in 1980. He had been released from parole in 2006 on the manslaughter conviction, and authorities said they had had no encounters with him since.

Investigators still haven't released the identity of remains found in Spengler's burned house. They have said they believe the remains are those of his 67-year-old sister, Cheryl Spengler, who also lived in the house near Rochester and has been unaccounted for since the killings. The Spengler siblings had lived in the home with their mother, Arline Spengler, who died in October. In all, seven houses were destroyed by the flames.

Investigators found a rambling, typed letter laying out Spengler's intention to destroy his neighborhood and "do what I like doing best, killing people."

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Woman Is Held in Death of Man Pushed Onto Subway Tracks in Queens

The woman, Erika Menendez, selected her victim because she believed him to be a Muslim or a Hindu, Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said.

“The defendant is accused of committing what is every subway commuter’s nightmare: Being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train,” Mr. Brown said in an interview.

In a statement, Mr. Brown quoted Ms. Menendez, “in sum and substance,” as having told the police: “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.” Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said.

The victim, Sunando Sen, was born in India and, according to a roommate, was raised Hindu.

Mr. Sen “was allegedly shoved from behind and had no chance to defend himself,” Mr. Brown said. “Beyond that, the hateful remarks allegedly made by the defendant and which precipitated the defendant’s actions should never be tolerated by a civilized society.”

Mr. Brown said he had no information on the defendant’s criminal or mental history.

“It will be up to the court to determine if she is fit to stand trial,” he said.

Ms. Menendez is expected to be arraigned by Sunday morning. If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. By charging her with murder as a hate crime, the possible minimum sentence she faced would be extended to 20 years from 15 years, according to prosecutors.

On Saturday night, Ms. Menendez, wearing a dark blue hooded sweatshirt, was escorted from the 112th Precinct to a waiting car by three detectives. Greeted by camera flashes and dozens of reporters, she let out a loud, unintelligible moan. She did not respond to reporters’ questions.

The attack occurred around 8 p.m. on Thursday at the 40th Street-Lowery Street station in Sunnyside.

Mr. Sen, 46, was looking out over the tracks when a woman approached him from behind and shoved him onto the tracks, according to the police. Mr. Sen never saw her, the police said.

 The woman fled the station, running down two flights of stairs and down the street.

 By the next morning, a brief and grainy black-and-white video of the woman who the police said was behind the attack was being broadcast on news programs.

Patrol officers picked up Ms. Menendez early Saturday after someone who had seen the video on television spotted her on a Brooklyn street and called 911, said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department. She was taken to Queens and later placed in lineups, according to detectives. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Friday that, according to witnesses’ accounts, there had been no contact on the subway platform between the attacker and the victim before the shove.

The case was the second this month involving someone being pushed to death in a train station. In the first case, Ki-Suck Han, 58, of Elmhurst, Queens, died under the Q train at the 49th Street and Seventh Avenue station on Dec. 3. Naeem Davis, 30, was charged with second-degree murder in that case.

Mr. Sen, after years of saving money, had opened a small copying business on the Upper West Side this year.

Ar Suman, a Muslim, and one of three roommates who shared a small first-floor apartment with Mr. Sen in Elmhurst, said he and Mr. Sen often discussed religion.

Though they were of different faiths, Mr. Suman said, he admired the respect that Mr. Sen showed for those who saw the world differently than he did. Mr. Suman said he once asked Mr. Sen why he was not more active in his faith and it resulted in a long philosophical discussion.

“He was so gentle,” Mr. Suman said. “He said in this world a lot of people are dying, killing over religious things.”

Reporting was contributed by William K. Rashbaum, Wendy Ruderman, Jeffrey E. Singer and Julie Turkewitz. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

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Woman Helped Firefighters’ Killer Get Ambush Gun, Police Say

According to the police, the woman, Dawn Nguyen, 24, bought a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle and a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun from a gun shop more than two years ago on behalf of William Spengler Jr., who as a felon was not permitted to buy or own a gun.

Mr. Spengler apparently used the rifle on Monday to kill the firefighters, whom he lured to his home in Webster, N.Y., near Lake Ontario, by starting a fire, the authorities said. After shooting at other emergency responders, Mr. Spengler shot himself in the head with another weapon, a handgun, an autopsy revealed. The fire destroyed seven homes.

Ms. Nguyen went with Mr. Spengler to buy the weapons at a shop in June 2010, according to a criminal complaint filed by the United States attorney in the Western District of New York.

When the police asked her about the purchase after the shooting, she claimed the guns were for her own protection. She also said they had been stolen from her car, although the police said no report had been filed to support that claim.

The complaint said Ms. Nguyen had told a friend that she bought the weapons for Mr. Spengler. The police said that assertion was corroborated by what Mr. Spengler wrote in a suicide note, in which he said a neighbor’s daughter helped him acquire the guns.

Since the guns were not intended for her, the complaint said, she made a false statement when she bought them, a felony that is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Ms. Nguyen is “the person who purchased that rifle and that shotgun found next to William Spengler,” William J. Hochul Jr., the United States attorney for the Western District of New York, said at a news conference in Rochester on Friday.

Ms. Nguyen’s lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment.

The Webster police chief, Gerald L. Pickering, said that based on the distance between Mr. Spengler’s hiding place and where his victims were found, he most likely used the Bushmaster.

A similar gun was used in the Newtown, Conn., school shootings, which prompted a renewed debate about the nation’s gun laws. Much of the discussion has been focused on whether military-style assault weapons like the Bushmaster should be banned.

On Thursday, the State Police released the autopsy results of the two firefighters who were killed and their attacker.

Michael Chiapperini, 43, died as a result of a gunshot wound and Tomasz Kaczowka, 19, died as a result of two gunshot wounds, the police said. Mr. Spengler, 62, was killed by a self-inflicted gunshot to his head.

Funeral and memorial services are planned for Mr. Chiapperini and Mr. Kaczowka during the weekend. Hundreds of firefighters and police officers from around the region were pouring into Webster on Friday.

The police have also recovered human remains in Mr. Spengler’s home, which was among the buildings that burned, but the remains have yet to be positively identified. Earlier this week, Chief Pickering said the police believed that the remains belong to Cheryl Spengler, 67, Mr. Spengler’s sister.

The two had fought bitterly in the past, friends and neighbors said, and they may have been involved in a dispute over who would take ownership of the family home following the death of their mother, Arline, in October. Mr. Spengler served 17 years in prison for the 1980 murder of his grandmother, whom he killed with a hammer.

It remained unclear what motivated him to target emergency responders, but he made his intentions clear in the note he left behind: he wanted to kill as many people as he could.

When the police arrived at the scene of the fire just before dawn on Monday, they were met by a fusillade of bullets. A SWAT team was called in to help thwart the gunman. As the gun battle raged, the fire spread.

The autopsy report showed that Mr. Spengler was not struck by any bullets fired by law enforcement officers.

Michael D. Regan contributed reporting.

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Woman Posed as Newtown Victim’s Aunt in Fraud Scheme, F.B.I. Says

The woman, Nouel Alba, 37, claimed to be an aunt of a 6-year-old victim and used her Facebook account, telephone calls and text messages to solicit money for a “funeral fund,” according to a criminal complaint filed in Federal District Court in Connecticut.

When contacted by federal agents investigating fraud schemes related to the shootings in Newtown, Conn., law enforcement officials said Ms. Alba denied that she had posted any messages on Facebook soliciting donations.

“It is unconscionable to think that the families of the victims in Newtown, and a sympathetic community looking to provide them some sort of financial support and comfort, have become the targets of criminals,” said Kimberly K. Mertz, the special agent in charge of the New Haven division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Today’s arrest is a stern message that the F.B.I. will investigate and bring to justice those who perpetrate Internet fund-raising scams, especially those scams that exploit the most vulnerable in their time of shared sorrow.”

If convicted, Ms. Alba faces a maximum of five years in prison and $250,000 fine.

Ms. Alba, who was released on $50,000 bond at her arraignment on Thursday in Hartford, was represented by a federal public defender, Deirdre Murray, who did not immediately return a call.

Allegations against Ms. Alba were first reported by several news organizations.

The complaint cites a report that aired on Dec. 19 on the CNN program “Anderson Cooper 360,” in which Ms. Alba denied taking “any funds from anybody.”

Jeff Rossen on the “Today” show on NBC also reported on the case on Dec. 21. In his report, Mr. Rossen said that within hours of the shooting, someone started posing as the aunt of Noah Pozner, a 6-year-old boy killed at Newtown.

“All we know is 18 kids have been killed,” the person wrote. “Still no word on my nephew.”

According to the criminal complaint, the person posted on Facebook under the name Victorian Glam Fairys and used an account controlled by Ms. Alba.

A few days later, Victorian Glam Fairys posted a message asking for donations and included a PayPal account and bank information.

Noah’s uncle, Alexis Haller, told Mr. Rossen that the family was disgusted when they learned people might be trying to make money off the shootings.

“It’s trying to turn a profit on a horrible tragedy, on the death of kids, 6-year-old kids, 7-year-old kids,” Mr. Haller said. “And to me, that’s just a horrible thing to be doing.”

According to the complaint, Ms. Alba kept up her ruse even when she was contacted by potential donors, claiming via text message that she hugged President Obama when he visited Newtown and that she was an emotional wreck.

“Ima mess,” she wrote to one person. “Not looking forward to see that casket cause that is what will kill us all today. 11 gun shot in his little body.”

“The guilt we have,” she continued, “just keeps building up.”

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