New York Post, Tuesday, August 6, 2019nypost.comPolice used controversial facial-
recognition technology to track
down an attempted-rape suspect
fewer than 24 hours after he alleg-
edly tried to force a woman into
sex at knifepoint, cops said.
Cops arrested Maximiliano Me-
jia, 27, for attempted rape Satur-
day. They allege he had followed a
29-year-old woman and tried to
force her to have sex Friday.
Police compared security foot-
age of the incident to Mejia’s mug-
shot from a previous rape charge,
authorities said.
He would not have been cap-
tured as quickly without the new
technology, according to former
NYPD officer and John Jay Col-
lege professor Eugene O’Donnell.
“Chances are this wouldn’t have
been solved,” O’Donnell said.
“It [would have been] not when
it’s solved — it’s if.”
Critics such as Illinois Institute
of Technology professor Noah Mc-
Clain, however, caution the tech-
nology could lead to false arrests.
“What if you look like one of
these sex criminals? You’ll have a
problem day in and day out,” he
said.
Mejia was jailed on $150,
bond, according to the NYPD.
Craig McCarthy
Tech nails
sex suspect
A 14-year-old boy who allegedly
stole a vehicle in Syracuse with
two children inside and drove off
as their mom held onto the car is
facing kidnapping charges.
The mother of the 6- and 7-year-
old children was standing outside
the parked car when the teen ap-
proached and got into the driver’s
seat Sunday afternoon, police say.
She was dragged as she hung on to
the car to try and stop the driver.
Another driver drove in front of
the car to stop it.
Police say the teen ran away but
was later caught by an “unknown
citizen.”
The children were not harmed.
The mother suffered minor inju-
ries. AP
Teen busted in
car-theft kidnap
A van that was stolen from a
Baltimore center that donates
free books to children has
been returned, after nearly
two weeks, covered in spray
paint, adorned with reproduc-
tions of Vincent Van Gogh’s
artwork and needing thou-
sands of dollars in repairs.
The Maryland Book Bank
said the donation pick-up van
was stolen from outside the
center’s warehouse either
late July 22 or early July 23.
It reappeared there on Fri-
day almost unrecognizable,
with a shattered window, no
keys, Van Gogh artwork on
its sides and the phrase “van
go” written on the hood.APVincent Van(dalism) Gogh
A onetime senior executive
at Tinder who publicly accused
the dating app’s former CEO of
sexually assaulting her has
filed a new lawsuit, alleging she
was canned for speaking out.
The accusations from Ro-
sette Pambakian, a former
vice president of marketing,were revealed in a separate
$2 billion lawsuit filed against
the company in August 2018.
That suit includes allega-
tions that former Tinder CEO
and IAC Chairman Greg Blatt
sexually assaulted Pambakian
at the 2016 company holiday
party in Los Angeles.Pambakian was placed on
administrative leave and then
fired on Aug. 15, 2018 — just a
day after the first lawsuit was
filed in Manhattan Supreme
Court.
In her new suit filed Mon-
day in Los Angeles Superior
Court, the ex-executive claimsshe was wrongfully axed. She
is seeking unspecified mone-
tary damages for negligence,
wrongful termination, sexual
battery, gender violence and
retaliation.
Tinder didn’t immediately
return a request for comment.
Elizabeth Rosner, Kenneth GargerAssaulted by Tinder CEO, then axed: suit
SERIAL TEXTER
By LAURA ITALIANOHow many texts and e-mails
to your ex is too many? This
judge says 5,026.
The divorce jurist has ruled
that Queens dad Daniel
Meredith fired off far too many
messages when he sent that
number of texts to his es-
tranged wife over the course of
a year, calling it “harassment.”
“This has to stop,” said
Queens Supreme Court Justice
Margaret Parisi McGowan in
June, before threatening to toss
Meredith in jail if he continued
to blow up his ex’s phone, tran-
scripts show. “This is beyond,
beyond a normal communica-
tion.”
The judge slapped Meredith
with a temporary order of pro-
tection, declaring the 14-per-
day text average to his wife,
Donna, as “out of proportion”
and placing him on a strict diet
of one text per day — allowing
him to speak to his kids via
FaceTime once a night be-
tween 6:15 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
But Meredith, a 42-year-old
artist for an architectural firm,
protested in court documents
that nearly all of the year’s
back-and-forths were about the
couple’s three toddlers, the
family car and their apartment
in Sunnyside.
Now, the dad — who hasbeen locked in a divorce battle
with his 35-year-old marketing
producer wife since January —
says he can’t communicate
with the kids’ nanny or their
day care and is fighting to stop
the judge from making the lim-
its permanent, court docu-
ments show.
He insists he only sent his
wife an average of eight texts a
day over the past year, while she
sent him an average of six —
which he says is far lower than
the average person their age.
“According to Internet re-
search and articles I found on-
line... the average American
sends and receives 94 test mes-
sages per day and the average
American between the ages of35 and 44 sends and receives 52
text messages per day,”
Meredith says in court papers
he filed to fight the protection
order.
“Americans in our age group
regularly text message each
other at the rate of 52 text mes-
sages a day.”
The couple has since filed
hundreds of pages of court
documents in which they
quibble over how many texts
and e-mails were sent and the
content of the messages.
They log their daily texting
averages down to two decimal
points — and cite how many
were “initiating” as opposed to
“responding” messages.
“The number of texts I senton our shared text thread with
our nanny since last year is far
less than the number of texts
our nanny has sent me/us,”
Meredith argues at one point
in the paperwork.
He also insists that, in many
of his daily texts, he was sim-
ply giving a quick response to
photos and videos of the kids
that were sent to him by the
nanny on a text chain with his
wife.
Meredith and his lawyer, Su-
zanne Kimberly Bracker, de-
clined to comment. Donna and
her attorney, Mia Poppe, also
declined.
A court date has not yet been
set for the couple’s next hearing.
[email protected]Stop! says
judge; it’s
for my kids,
claims dad
Tom CallanGET THE
MESSAGE?
“This has to
stop,” says a
Queens judge
of Daniel
Meredith’s
5,026 texts to
estranged wife
Donna over the
span of a year.