This story by staff writers Douglass Dowty and Robert A. Baker DeWitt, NY -- Carol Patapow figured there might be a fire in her DeWitt neighborhood when she awoke to sounds of sirens and a heavy truck at 11:17 p.m. Tuesday night. Then she saw a 36,000-pound dump truck barreling through her yard. “When I saw him come through...
This story by staff writers Douglass Dowty and Robert A. Baker
DeWitt, NY -- Carol Patapow figured there might be a fire in her DeWitt neighborhood when she awoke to sounds of sirens and a heavy truck at 11:17 p.m. Tuesday night.
Then she saw a 36,000-pound dump truck barreling through her yard.
“When I saw him come through the side yard, I said, ‘Oh my God, a dump truck!’” Patapow said. “I kept on saying, ‘Did I really see a dump truck?’”
Her call to 911 let the Beard Avenue resident know she was now ground zero in a pursuit that had begun nearly an hour before at Clay’s Great Northern Mall, where the suspect is accused of stealing from a vending machine. The chase would end a mile from Patapow’s house, when police shot Stanley Lostumbo, 37, as the dump truck they said he was driving rammed a police car.
Lostumbo, of 4403 James St., DeWitt, was treated at Upstate University Hospital for minor injuries from bullet fragments after the crash, Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh said Wednesday. His passenger, Kyla K. Kazel, 20, also suffered minor injuries from bullet fragments and was treated at Crouse Hospital and later released. No bystanders were injured during the chase across a large portion of Onondaga County.
Stanley LostumboLostumbo was charged Wednesday with two counts of attempted murder. He also faces charges of criminal mischief, a felony, and one count of petit larceny, three counts of unlawfully fleeing a police officer and three counts of reckless driving, all misdemeanors. He was arraigned Wednesday night.
Kazel, whose address is unknown, was charged with criminal mischief, a felony, and petit larceny, a misdemeanor. She also was charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance, a felony, and felony and misdemeanor charges of criminal possession of a controlled substance stemming from a prior investigation, Walsh said.
Authorities revealed Wednesday that they first fired at Lostumbo in Patapow’s yard, even before he was struck by a second round of gunfire in the 3500 block of Burnet Avenue, on the East Syracuse-DeWitt line.
Neighbors provided the following account of the first gunfire:
The dump truck stopped in Patapow’s back yard, next to a line of 15- to 20-foot tall trees on the edge of her property. Police cars pulled into her yard on both sides of her house.
“I thought it was a done thing. I thought they had him,” Patapow recalled. She saw police get out of a patrol car.
“I heard the cop tell him to get down,” she said.
The dump truck shifted into reverse and sped at the officers, Walsh said. That’s when Deputy Andrew Costello fired his service weapon at the truck, the sheriff said.
On the other side of the tree line, brothers Jason and Shannon Earley were enjoying a warm night with their children outside a house on Calhoun Street, just around the corner from Patapow’s house.
The brothers knew something was wrong because they could hear the sirens as the chase went up Thompson Road. They could follow the whole thing by watching the police helicopter, they said. And it was coming towards them.
Suddenly, there was the dump truck in Patapow’s yard with its lights shining through the trees.
The headlights illuminated the brothers and they told the children to go inside, they both said.
“Pow, pow, pow,” Jason Earley said. “We ducked.”
Asked if they were nervous, Jason Earley said, “Not until the cops started shooting.”
Jason Earley questioned the wisdom of the police shooting in the thickly settled neighborhood.
“Do they know what’s on the other side of these bushes,” he asked.
Walsh defended his deputy's actions, saying Costello was on foot and that the dump truck driver posed a threat to bystanders. When the truck started backing up, the deputy was "within policy and within his rights to protect himself," Walsh said.
The Earley brothers remember hearing three shots. Patapow, who was on the floor with her dog at the time, remembers two shots. Walsh said he believed two shots were fired.
But the gunfire didn’t stop the dump truck’s driver. He shifted into drive and plowed through the brush onto James Street, Walsh said.
The dump truck went down to Thompson Road and turned onto Burnet Avenue, where it crashed into a Syracuse police cruiser. As deputies approached, the driver again shifted into reverse and rammped the patrol cars, nearly running over deputies attempting to take him into custody, Walsh said.
Deputies Matthew Carey and Matthew Carolson fired two or three shots at Lostumbo, Walsh said. After he was struck, officers were immediately able to take him into custody.
Lostumbo has a lengthy criminal history, Walsh said. According to the state Department of Correctional Services website, Lostumbo was sentenced in 2003 to 3 1/2 to 6 years in prison on a charge of forgery. He appeared to have served a portion of the sentence before being paroled, but was returned to prison on a parole violation, the website states. He was finally released from prison in March 2009. He also has a lengthy record of arrests, including burglary, robbery, grand larceny and criminal mischief, according to Walsh and The Post-Standard archives.