Earlier this week, two men were arrested in New York's Hells Kitchen after pushing a corpse, seated in an office chair, along the sidewalk to a check-cashing store to cash the dead man’s Social Security check.
According to reports, a friend and the roommate of 66-year-old Virgilio Cintron seized the opportunity to lay their hands on his $355 benefit check after Cintron died of natural causes at his West 52nd Street apartment. “Hell’s Kitchen has a rich history,” said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, “but this is one for the books.”
The roommate, James P. O’Hare, and his friend, David J. Dalaia, both 65 and unemployed, placed Cintron’s body in the chair and wheeled it around the corner, south along Ninth Avenue. The men parked the corpse-laden chair in front of Pay-O-Matic, a check-cashing business that Mr. Cintron had patronized. They went inside to present the check, but a clerk said Cintron would have to cash it himself, and asked where he was. “He's outside,” O’Hare said, indicating the body in the chair. The two men then started to bring the chair inside, but it was too late.
Their sidewalk antics had already attracted the stares of passers-by who were startled by the sight of the body flopping from side to side as the two men tried to prop it up, the police said. An off-duty detective eating a late lunch at a nearby Empanada Mama saw the crowd and notified the Midtown North station house. Police officers and an ambulance arrived as the two men were trying to maneuver the corpse and chair into the check-cashing office.
The two men were taken into custody and questioned. The police said they were considering charging them with check-cashing fraud.
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