By JOSEPH KELLARD
"She was sprayed with some glass and screaming like a maniac," said Kathy, who was upstairs at the time of the drive-by shooting on the afternoon of Oct. 29. "She really could have been seriously hurt, but thank God she wasn't."
Jason Kalikow, 16, of Harbor Isle, and Luke Jaret, 17, of Woodmere, were arrested and charged with criminal mischief for the incident and for another BB gun shooting that took out a window of a 2006 Volkswagen on the Thilmans' Washington Avenue street in Harbor Isle.
After the Thilmans called police, John got in his car and canvassed the neighborhood, looking for a suspicious car they had noticed outside their home, and he found Kalikow and Jaret outside a similar car near Village Hall on Long Beach Road.
"I confronted them," Thilman said. "I said, 'Hey, did you just shoot at my house?' Then they jumped in their car and jumped a curb to get away."
Thilman took the car¹s plate number and drove back home to wait for police. While he waited, the suspicious car cruised past his home again, and more shots were fired at the Thilmans' house.
Thilman confirmed the plate number and noticed the same two boys in the car. Police caught them, searched the car and found BBs inside, and discovered that the car was registered to an adult in Woodmere.
The shooting was the latest in a series that have cost the Thilmans an estimated $6,000 in broken windows at their home, which abuts the north bridge in Harbor Isle. Two nights earlier, on Oct. 27, a BB gunman shot out a large slab of glass that was part of the railing around their backyard deck, as well as their daughter's bedroom window.
"My poor kid is scared stiff," Kathy said. "She thinks someone is trying to kill her now."
The Thilmans believe Kalikow is also responsible for these shootings, and others agree. "We feel [Kalikow and Jaret] are responsible for some more broken windows in the area," said Lt. Larry Feffer of the 4th Precinct, noting that BB guns were also recovered in Jaret's car. "However, we don't exactly know which ones at this time."
The Thilmans may pursue additional charges, including reckless endangerment ‹ considering that their daughter could have been seriously hurt ‹ harassment and an order of protection against Kalikow for prior incidents.
The Thilmans said the Oct. 29 shooting was an escalation of a series of incidents in which Kalikow has harassed them. Kathy said that young teenagers, sometimes in groups of up to 30, often hang out at night near the bridge as well as the park and the beach across the street from their home, and that she and her husband had called the police multiple times in early September to report incidents ranging from vandalism to verbal threats.
"There's so many of them that there's this gang mentality now," Kathy said. "When they cross over the bridge and you beep them to get out of the way, they'll curse at you. One guy got out of his car and almost got into a fistfight with them."
Kalikow in particular, Kathy claims, has harassed her and her family since the summer. She said that while the San Gennaro Feast was going on in town in September, Kalikow tried to rip a fence down on the side of her property next to the bridge. "All I did was holler out to him to knock it off, and he started cursing and screaming, 'You come out here,'" she said. "The next night he comes back and he's hollering and screaming out my bedroom window while I'm sleeping, yelling 'Come out here. Do you want a piece of me?' Now, mind you, this is a 16-year-old boy."
Kathy said that John recently noticed that Kalikow was starting to hang out with someone who drove a car. "That's when, for some reason, the level of their actions started to elevate, because now they had a getaway [vehicle]," she said.
The Thilmans claim that when they spoke with Kalikow's lawyer, Glenn Ingoglia of Island Park, he offered to pay restitution if they dropped the charges. "We're not dropping any charges," John vowed.
When asked how he plans to pursue his client's case, Ingoglia told the Herald he had no comment. Kalikow's mother, Annette Kalikow, did not return a call for comment, and Luke Jaret's father declined comment about his son's arrest.
Above all, Kathy said, she worries that some parents seem unconcerned that their kids hang out on street corners in large groups, and said some even drop their kids off at the bridge. "They say, 'They're not doing anything, they're just hanging out. Why is everybody harassing them and chasing them away? They have no place to go,'" Kathy said. "But this is what happens when kids in large groups are unsupervised, and their parents don't seem to care."
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
