New York Post, Tuesday, December 1, 2020
nypost.com
O
N a bright Monday
morning in August,
18-year-old David
Peralta-Mera drove
his cherry-red Mus-
tang, his girlfriend in
the passenger seat,
into a well-trafficked
parking lot off Main Street in East
Hampton.
Life was looking good: Peralta-
Mera had two jobs, one in food
prep at Dopo La Spiaggia and the
other doing maintenance at the
Sportime tennis club in Amagan-
sett. He was a rising sophomore
at John Jay College. The car was a
recent splurge, paid for with his
summer wages.
As for what happened next,
Peralta-Mera doesn’t really recall.
But, according to police, the Suf-
folk County District Attorney’s
office, witness statements and
surveillance video, 31-year-old
Charles Harrison Streep —
nephew of Meryl — drove past
Peralta-Mera in his own drop-top
Audi and exchanged words.
Within seconds, Streep, much
taller and broader than Peralta-
Mera, was out of his car and
shoved the teen. The two grap-
pled, but Streep quickly got Peral-
ta-Mera in a chokehold, neck
squeezed under Streep’s right arm-pit. Streep hoisted Peralta-Mera’s
limp body twice, like a rag doll,
then threw him to the pavement.
That afternoon, the 18-year-old
was airlifted to a hospital with a
Level 1 trauma center, where he
underwent emergency surgery,
needing part of his skull removed
to treat a brain bleed. He was left
with a crescent of thick, blood-
encrusted staples arcing up from
his right ear.
Peralta-Mera’s prognosis, in the
short and long term, is unclear.
His civil attorney, Edmond Chak-
makian, told The Post that the
teen has medical bills that climb
well over $130,000, but is unable
to work, let alone drive his new
car. He can’t attend college this
fall. Chakmakian says Peralta-
Mera is “probably not going to
have much of a career.”
Three days after the attack,
Streep was arrested at his family’s
$5 million dollar Pondview Lane
estate, charged with two felonies
— second-degree assault and sec-
ond-degree strangulation — and
released on $5,000 bail.According to an affidavit filed
with the New York State Supreme
Court, Streep twice attempted to
dodge a process server sent by
Chakmakian to his Prince Street
residence in Manhattan in early
September.
“I was told by the doorman of
the building [on two separate
dates] that no one by the name of
Charles Harrison Streep lived
there,” process server Frankie
Roberson stated.
Charles Harrison Streep did in-
deed live there. He is represented
in this civil suit by Randy Mastro,
onetime lawyer to Rudy Giuliani
and co-chair with Alec Baldwin
of the Hamptons International
Film Festival. Streep is required
to make his first statement in the
civil case Tuesday.
This defendant, it turns out, has
something of a violent past.
Chakmakian’s own investiga-
tion has dug up a prior disorderly
conduct charge against Streep
from 2012, his guilty plea entered
in a Pennsylvania court.C
ARE to guess how this is
playing out?
The Suffolk County DA
recently lowered both
charges against Streep to misde-
meanors, bail exonerated. Peral-
ta-Mera and his family struggle to
understand why.
“I could have died,” Peralta-
Mera told me recently.
We were sitting in the living
room of the small, immaculate
home where he lives with his
mother and older brother, situ-
ated at the end of a hidden East
Hampton road. The kitchen was
tiny and utilitarian. Models ofclassic cars sat on the living room
shelves, collected by his father,
who works in construction.
Peralta-Mera’s mother takes
care of other people’s children.
She was about to send her
younger son out into the world,
but now it’s unclear how long
he’ll need her help.
“I was in [the hospital] for a
week,” Peralta-Mera said. He’s
now very sensitive to bright light
and has trouble watching TV. He
can’t play video games or read orwork out. He struggles to concen-
trate and sometimes loses his
train of thought 10 seconds into a
conversation.
Peralta-Mera is athletic, but
shorter and slighter than he pho-
tographs. His affect is flat and re-
signed, the huge scar on his skull
a daily reminder of how close he
came to dying.
“My head was swollen the first
month and a half,” he said. Now,
“I have to stay inside. Just a lot of
doctor appointments and neu-victim of horror: 18-year-old
David Peralta-Mera had to have part of
his skull removed and was left with a
crescent of staples in his head after an
apparent road rage fight caught on
camera. He now has vision and
concentration issues. Friends have set
up a Web site to help raise $100,000 for
his medical bills and recovery.Beaten by Meryl Streep’s nephew, teen faces
hope for
hampton
justiCe
MAUREEN
CALLAHANThis case gets at two
lightning rods no one in
the Hamptons ever wants
to touch: class and race.
lightning rods no one in
the Hamptons ever wants