City Newcomer Is Let Down by a Stranger, Then the Police

Fredrick Brennan, 19, moved out of his mother’s home in New Jersey in August and into an apartment in Brooklyn that his boss helped him find. This leap was far greater than the 120 miles or so on a map.

Mr. Brennan was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, commonly referred to as brittle bone disease. A defect in his genes stunted his growth. Below his head and barrel chest are shrunken, bowed stumps for legs and tiny arms twisted after multiple fractures. He said he has broken bones 120 times — “just an estimate.”

He operates his motorized wheelchair with a joystick near his right hand. He spends most of his day at his computer, creating code for new websites for a company called Razor Clicks.

He is quick to smile, even as he tells of what happened to him on Jan. 1 and, perhaps worse, what happened on the next day, when things were supposed to be looking up. His was a bizarre odyssey of naïveté and determination, a whiplash of labels: helpless robbery victim, empowered accuser, and then, helpless again. The police did their best to help him, moving fast and at one point performing a thoughtful, even tender gesture, but then they let him down.

On Dec. 21, Mr. Brennan went to visit his mother in Atlantic City. He had been having a tough time: an acquaintance had taken money from his account using his debit card. He was saving up for a new wheelchair. The one he has is old and regularly shorts out; loose stuffing pokes from the cushions.

He needed about $5,000 and was almost there. But he was worried about another unauthorized withdrawal from his account. So he took $4,850 out of the bank with him on the trip to New Jersey, tucked in a wallet in his bag.

On Jan. 1, he boarded the bus in Atlantic City to head home. Before he did, his mother urged him to hide the wallet in the wheelchair “I was like, ‘Oh, it will be O.K., it’s the Port Authority,’ ” Mr. Brennan said this week. “That was pretty dumb. I haven’t lived in New York City very long. I guess I’m not very street smart.”

A few hours later, in the Port Authority, he steered toward a MetroCard machine. “There was this homeless guy,” he said. “He took an immediate interest in me.” The man said he helped people navigate the terminal and get where they need to go. “I guess he thought I was a tourist. I followed him. Very stupid, because I knew where it was.”

They got to the machine and the man asked for a dollar. Mr. Brennan pulled out his wallet and obliged. The man asked for another — “Come on, I can’t even buy a hot dog with this” — and Mr. Brennan forked it over. The man left.

Mr. Brennan started the process of buying a new MetroCard, his wallet resting in his lap. And then the man doubled back, grabbed the wallet and bolted.

“I started screaming very loud, ‘He took my wallet!’ ” The man fled up the stairs to Eighth Avenue. A stranger, hearing Mr. Brennan’s shouts, ran after him, and soon returned with a police officer.

The officer asked Mr. Brennan’s name. When he heard it, he handed over a wallet he’d just found on the ground. But the cash was gone. The officer asked for a description of the suspect. How tall was he? “I look up at everybody,” Mr. Brennan said. “I said, ‘5-6 to 5-11’ which isn’t very helpful.” The police reviewed video of the robbery. Mr. Brennan made his way home, embarrassed: “I should have done what my mom said.”

The next day, a detective called and said they had made an arrest. Could Mr. Brennan come to Manhattan and look at a lineup?

Sure.

The robbery squad is in Greenwich Village, on 12th Street. Mr. Brennan left his fourth-floor apartment in Midwood and took the elevator to the street and several blocks to the B68 bus, which took him south — in the opposite direction of Manhattan — and to a Q train station. There are nearer stations, but they do not have elevators, and are useless to him.

He said he was nervous. Not about the lineup, but the weather. The winter storm that forecasters predicted would blanket the city in eight to 10 inches of snow was hours away.

At the detectives’ squad, he rolled into a room with a window, where he was to look at the men in the lineup. Already, a problem.

“It’s really high,” he said. “There’s no way to see through it.” A detective gently lifted Mr. Brennan out of the chair and held him up.

Mr. Brennan recognized the man right away. Identified as Chris Sanchez, 49, he had been arrested near the Port Authority early that morning. The police found some crack, marijuana and $4,073 in his pockets, according to a criminal complaint. He was charged with grand larceny.

For Mr. Brennan, who would likely get most of his money back, it should have been a moment of celebration. But by the time he finished filling out various forms, it was late in the evening, and snowing heavily.

He asked for a ride home. He was worried his wheelchair would short out in the snow.

The police first told him that they would secure him an Access-a-Ride van, but then he was told that would not be possible. He said he was told the police did not have a van with a lift for the chair.

A detective led him outside and pushed him through snow to the Union Square subway station. The detective left. It was almost 11 p.m., Mr. Brennan said.

He took a subway to the Atlantic Avenue station and switched to another train, and got off at 86th Street and Bay Parkway in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to take a bus several stops to his home, he said.

The bus did not come. The snow kept falling. He sat under a covered bus stop, but the accumulation grew before him. After more than an hour outside, his hands and feet numb, he realized that even if a bus did arrive, his chair would not make it through the snow. He called 911 on his cellphone.

The dispatcher reported a person in a wheelchair was stranded and suffering from hypothermia, and an ambulance arrived, taking Mr. Brennan to Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, a Fire Department spokesman said. He was kept for observation for exposure, and sent home later that day.

A police spokeswoman said Friday that the matter was being reviewed, and that the detectives thought Mr. Brennan had a friend who could pick him up in Brooklyn. Mr. Brennan said he never told them that.

“Although the detectives sought out several options for the victim to be transported to his residence,” the spokeswoman, Deputy Chief Kim Royster, said, “we should have done a better job of getting him to his destination.”

His boss, Aaron Parnes, 37, said Mr. Brennan could be “really fiercely independent,” perhaps to a fault. He said Mr. Brennan should have called him that night: “He loathes having to ask people to help him.”

Mr. Brennan returned to Manhattan to testify before a grand jury. Now, he just wants his money back. Prosecutors have told him that will happen any day, he said.

The whole affair could have soured Mr. Brennan on New York. But it did not.

“I have a pretty nice life here,” he said. He remains irritated that the police could not get him home, while grateful for the quick arrest in his case.

“It’s really bad sometimes to be crippled in a wheelchair, and it reminds you that you can’t fight back when someone’s trying to rob you.”

Correction: March 27, 2014
Because of an editing error, a picture caption with the Crime Scene column on Jan. 18, about a man in a wheelchair who was stranded in a snowstorm after a trip to a police station, misspelled his given name. He is Fredrick Brennan, not Frederick. (This correction was delayed because the error was found during research for a follow-up column.)