By: JOSEPH KELLARD
A fire was set inside a storage room at the rear of the Brower Avenue Shopping Plaza in Oceanside the day after Christmas. The arson marked the second such incident in that area, after police suspect teenagers set a shed afire behind the neighboring Oceanside Jewish Center in October.
No suspects have been arrested for either arson, but some people are concerned about kids loitering in or behind the shopping plaza, some of whom, they say, drink and do drugs. "We still have teens hanging out all the time around here," said Cathy Lucas, owner of Fun 4 Kids, the store that sustained the most damage in the recent fire. "They're smoking pot, they're cursing and leaving their garbage, and now, the worst case, they got in [the storage room] and set fire to it. It's one thing to hang out, it's another to be destructive."
Deputy Inspector James O'Leary of the 4th Precinct informed the Herald that a worker at Mario's Pizzeria witnessed smoke coming from the rear of the shopping center, grabbed a pot of water from his restaurant and extinguished the fire himself. The cinder-block storage room, which houses a water main, contained a large gasoline can that could have ignited, Lucas claimed.
The Pizzeria and other stores in the shopping center, about three blocks from Oceanside High School, regularly attract students from OHS, some of whom often hang out in the rear of the building. While 4th Precinct police have no concrete evidence that the fire on Friday, Dec. 26, was set by teens, they suspect it was.
While the fire is under investigation by the Nassau County Arson and Bomb Squad, O'Leary said this blaze, and the one at the OJC in October, have the earmarks of fires set by kids.
The OJC, just east of the shopping plaza, had a boarded-up shed at the rear of the synagogue that was burned down on Friday, Oct. 17. Although no suspect was arrested, both police and the OJC believe teens were the culprits. Leonard Learner, a director at OJC, told the Herald after the fire that kids occasionally went in the structure to take drugs.
"We've had problems for a long time now with kids breaking into the [shed]," he said. "They are doing drugs, and doing it behind another storage shed we have."
Due to smoke damage and the work of firefighters at the plaza, Lucas had to close Fun 4 Kids for a week to have fire restoration, glass and locksmith companies come in to repair her store. "Nothing really bad happened, but I lost a week's worth of business," she said. "And God forbid the fire was worse, it could have taken out the whole shopping center."
Lucas claimed that police are "sort of numb" to the fact that kids often loiter at the shopping center, since teens have hung around since the shopping center was opened decades ago. "The police didn't even bother to ask some of the business owners here who could have possibly identified the people who started the fire," she said.
O'Leary said that the area is part of the precinct's targeted patrol area, covered by both uniformed and plain-clothes officers. "We're investigating and we're there every day, but obviously we can't chase down every kid," he said. "But you have other calls you have to do, and there's only so much we can do. There's too many kids and not enough basements."
Said Lucas, "The business owners should draw attention to the community that the kids are hanging out here."
