By:Jeff Lipton
Police arrested a 25-year-old Meadowmere Park man and his live-in girlfriend on a long list of drug and weapon possession charges last weekend when the woman allegedly went bonkers after the couple had an argument and she trashed the apartment, causing about $20,000 in damages, authorities said.
Fourth Precinct police officers John Trutt and John Lezamiz, responding to a disturbance at 63 West Ave., at 5:07 a.m. Saturday, June 9, observed the woman, Mary Lou Bastidas, 30, of Brooklyn bleeding profusely from both of her hands and arms, officials said.
Police said the woman was going berserk, throwing items inside the apartment and breaking the front and side glass windows of the home, which is how she sustained her injuries. She also was throwing items from the home onto the front lawn, officials said.
She then entered the detached garage and threw an open container of paint into the interior of her boyfriend's 1999 Mercedes Benz convertible, police said.
The officers managed to subdue the woman and place her under arrest. She was treated for her deep cuts at Nassau University Medical Center and released, said Shelley Lotenberg, a hospital spokesperson.
"She lost a lot of blood at the scene," said Lt. Det. Gregory Detwiller of the Fourth Squad.
Fearing that there may be others victims in the home, the officers carried out a search of the building and saw large amounts of blood smeared throughout the apartment, which police later discovered was Bastidas' blood. During their room-by-room search, Lezamiz found a loaded 9 mm magazine on the floor, along with a glass vial and a plastic zip lock bag with white pills, believed to be Ecstasy, on the dresser in the home's master bedroom, detectives said.
In addition, police said they found a large, yet undetermined amount of cash, in the home, Detwiller said.
A dog and an officer from the county's K-9 Unit were called in to help complete the search and recovered assorted amounts of alleged narcotics, officials said. Police later discovered that, during the woman's tirade, she allegedly fired a shot from the 9 mm into the house, and thus charged her with reckless endangerment in the second degree and criminal mischief in the second degree.
"She was charged with reckless endangerment because the bullet could have passed through the wall of her house into an adjoining house," Detwiller said.
The gun, which had been reported stolen, was recovered at the scene, detectives said.
Bastidas' boyfriend, Michael Ezzo, who was not home at the time, was arrested at about 11 a.m. June 9 when he returned to the trashed apartment, police said. Each suspect was charged with two counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree, criminal use of drug paraphernalia in the second degree, criminal possession of stolen property in the fourth degree, possession of a dangerous weapon in the fourth degree, unlawful possession of marijuana and two counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the fifth degree, police said.
They were arraigned on the charges in First District Court in Hempstead on Sunday, June 10. Bastidas was being held on $250,000 bond or $150,000 cash bail and Ezzo on $50,000 bond or $25,000 cash bail, according to a spokesperson for the Nassau County District Attorney.
Fire officials from the Meadowmere Park Fire Department were called to 63 West Ave., at 4:50 a.m. Monday, May 28 when a 2000 Lexus RX30 was set ablaze. Investigators said that the car was scratched with a key, as was the 1999 Mercedes-Benz. The county's Arson/Bomb Squad has been investigating and detectives are trying to determine what, if any, connection that had to the June 9 incident.
Ezzo has been renting the apartment for a couple of months, Detwiller said, adding that Bastidas has been recently living there with him.
Detwiller said the suspects had been in the city that night and apparently had some sort of falling out. "Apparently, they had some kind of an argument," Detwiller said. "To do what she did, she had to be quite irate. She started breaking up the house. She went off on a bender....Obviously she was pretty pissed off."
