At the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on March 31st, when I got in close to look at a ten-petal anemone seed core (Anemone berlandieri) I noticed a spider that had stretched itself out there. And from our back yard on April 2nd, here's how a seed core comes undone.
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If you'd been reading the New York Post on April 1st you might at first have thought that this story was an April Fool's joke.
A Manhattan parking garage attendant who was shot twice while confronting an alleged thief — then wrestled the gun away and opened fire on the suspect — has been charged with attempted murder, police said.
Hmmm. You could understand why the suspected thief who shot the parking garage attendant would be charged with attempted murder, but why the man who was attacked and defended himself? The story continues:
The overnight worker, identified by cops as Moussa* Diarra, 57, was also hit with assault and criminal possession of a weapon charge in the Saturday incident, which unfolded around 5:30 a.m. as the attendant saw a man peering into cars on the second floor of the West 31st Street garage, the sources said.
Believing the man was stealing, the attendant brought him outside and asked what was inside his bag.
Instead of cooperating, the man pulled out a gun, the sources said.
Diarra tried to grab for the weapon, and it went off — leaving him shot in the stomach and grazed in the ear by a bullet before he turned the firearm on the would-be thief and shot him in the chest, sources said.
The suspected thief, identified as Charles Rhodie, 59, was also charged with attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon, as well as burglary, police said late Saturday.
While police hit Diarra with attempted murder, it wasn't immediately clear if prosecutors would follow through with the charge.
The initial charges against Diarra sparked outrage — and recalled the case of Manhattan bodega clerk Jose Alba, who was charged with murder after a fatal July 1 confrontation in his store with an angry customer who came behind his counter and accosted him.
Family friend Mariame Diarra, who is not related to the attendant, slammed the decision to hit the married dad of two with charges.
"That's self-defense. The guy tried to rob his business," she told The Post. "He's there for security. That's literally his job, to defend his business. … He takes his job seriously. … Attempted murder charge has no place there. He [robber] came to find him at his job with his gun, he [Diarra] has to defend himself."
An individual who works nearby the garage, which is across from Moynihan Train Station, was also incredulous.
"You are kidding. That's an April Fool Day joke, right?" the worker asked of the charges against Diarra, adding, "How can a hardworking man get arrested for defending himself?"
The answer, unfortunately, is that this took place in Manhattan, where a district attorney named Alvin Bragg refuses to prosecute many criminals, has reduced 52% of felony charges to misdemeanors, and who charged the aforementioned José Alba for defending himself against a criminal.
On April 2nd the New York Post ran a follow-up:
The Manhattan parking-garage worker who was initially hit with an attempted-murder rap for shooting an armed would-be thief wept as he lay handcuffed to his hospital bed Sunday, stunned at his fate.
"I got bullets in me, and I'm chained to a hospital bed, but I didn't do anything wrong," Moussa Diarra, 57, lamented, according to Meyers Parking's Chief Operating Officer Michael Carolan, who spoke to The Post.
Finally came another follow-up on the incident:
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will not prosecute the parking-garage attendant who shot a suspected thief after getting wounded himself, the DA's office told The Post on Sunday.
Moussa Diarra, 57, was shot twice by alleged thief Charles Rhodie, 59, early Saturday before turning the tables on the suspect and pumping a bullet into him with the accused criminal's handgun, authorities said.
Yet cops charged Diarra with attempted murder, assault and gun possession in the case, while Rhodie was slapped with those three raps as well as burglary.
But Bragg — who is already under fire for indicting former President Donald Trump last week in a fraud-related case — will dismiss the case against Diarra "pending further investigation," his office said.
The raps remain against Rhodie, who police sources say has at least 20 prior arrests, mostly for petit larceny, with the most recent one occurring in 2018. Diarra has no priors, sources said.
* Moussa is a French spelling of Mūsā, the Arabic form of the name Moses.
© 2023 Steven Schwartzman
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