George Gardner, 30, parked his ride on E. 81st St. near First Ave. on Monday night, he told the Daily News.

Hours later, he discovered his 2019 BMW M4 jacked up off the ground and missing a wheel — again.

“He left the jack, so it didn’t trigger the antitheft system,” Gardner surmised.

It was the second time in five months he went outside to find his car missing a wheel, which retails for about $1,400, in the neighborhood.

“I was just kind of sitting there stunned that this happened again,” said Gardner. “Then I’m waiting for the police and the officer noticed me. She was like, ‘I know you, this car is familiar.'”

The same cop responded to his call for help on Oct. 3, when the thief was caught on camera stealing Gardner’s wheel.

After another one went missing, Gardner again went searching for surveillance footage, which a superintendent at a nearby building provided him with.

As the frustrated man reviewed the video, he noticed the grainy shots of the thief’s getaway car appeared to match the one from the October larceny.

“The mannerisms look so familiar,” Gardner said. “I was like, that’s the guy, for sure.”

Gardner usually keeps his car at his parents’ northern New Jersey home, but since he’s mother’s health began to decline, he’s been keeping it outside his Upper East Side place, too, allowing him to make quick trips as needed.

“There are parts of the city where you think you didn’t get hit with a crime like this,” said Gardner, who lives in the posh neighborhood with his girlfriend.

He will have to fork over another $500 to his insurance company to replace the wheel — a hefty fee he paid just months earlier.

The NYPD last year cracked down on car thefts as reports of stolen vehicles surged citywide, The News previously reported.

Last month, there were 967 cars stolen off city streets, according to NYPD data released Tuesday. The figure marked a 13% downtick from February 2023, when 1,111 car owners reported theft.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Maxwell Wiley denied Penny’s motion to dismiss in a hearing Wednesday morning. The judge said he needed more time to decide on another defense motion to suppress search warrant evidence.

Penny, who’s charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, isn’t expected to to go to trial until at least this fall.

A small group of protesters chased Penny as he got into a car to leave the courthouse Wednesday, briefly blocking his vehicle at one point as they shouted at him.

“While we disagree with the Court’s decision not to dismiss the indictment, we understand that the legal threshold to continue even an ill-conceived prosecution is very low,” Kenny’s lawyers, Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff, said in a statement Wednesday. “We are confident that a jury, aware of Danny’s actions in putting aside his own safety to protect the lives of his fellow riders, will deliver a just verdict.”

Penny, who is white, put Neely — a Black 30-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator with a history of mental illness and multiple arrests — into a fatal chokehold on an uptown F train on May 1, 2023.

“This was a win today, a big win,” said Donte Mills, a lawyer for Neely’s father, Andre Zachary. “The judge said Daniel Penny will face these charges. … It’s a win for Jordan’s family. It’s a win for the people who stood on that subway platform and stopped the trains from moving [during a protest].”

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When asked about a mention in court about tests to determine if Neely had synthetic marijuana in his system, Mills said, “They’re looking for an excuse. I assure you Daniel Penny did not know what was in Jordan’s system when he decided to choke him to death when Jordan was not fighting back.”

Zachary did not speak to reporters Wednesday.

Chilling video shows Penny, 24, keeping Neely in a chokehold for more than two minutes as he slowly kicked his legs and finally stopped moving, while two other men helped restrain him.

Neely entered the train at the Second Ave. station ranting, “I don’t have food, I don’t have a drink, I’m fed up… I don’t mind if I go to jail and [get] life in prison … I’m ready to die,” according to freelance journalist and fellow straphanger Albert Vasquez. According to police, Neely yelled and threw garbage at commuters.

Penny is accused of coming up behind him and putting him in a chokehold.

The NYPD’s decision to initially release Penny after being questioned sparked a firestorm of criticism across the city and calls for racial justice, and Neely’s death highlighted the repeated failures of the city’s mental health services.

In a recorded interview released by his lawyers last year, Penny said he was “scared” and felt “intimidated” by Neely.

“I was praying that the police would come and take this situation over. I didn’t want to be put in that situation, but I couldn’t just sit still and let him carry out these threats,” Penny said in a video posted on the Law & Crime Network Youtube channel.

Penny is expected back in court March 20.

With a wintry mix of snow and sleet forecast for Saturday, volunteers worried that migrants will wait for hours or even overnight outside the center during the storm in hope of securing a shelter bed.

The volunteers take the long line as a sign that the city is ill-prepared to handle another influx of people looking for shelter, as families with children will need to find new housing as their 60-day limits in city shelters start to expire next week.

“It’s a ticking bomb,” said Mammad Mahmoodi, founder of volunteer group EV Loves. “One of these days, one of them is just going to lose it… Understand this: They are pushing people to the brink.”

Since the site opened in October, migrants have often queued outside the building, a former Catholic school.

Since the holidays, the line has stretched longer than ever. On Friday, more than 1,000 people seeking shelter stood on a line that stretched several blocks.

With temperatures dipping below freezing and a winter storm slated to hit the Big Apple on Saturday, migrants kicked out of city shelters after their stay limits will keep lining up outside the site in Manhattan’s East Village where they hope to be reassigned to a new shelter bed.

“People just have to hang there — and especially now, with all the weather getting really cold, you know, it’s quite a miserable situation,” Mahmoodi said.

“The system is in place, but the issue is a backlog. There are not enough open beds. The city hasn’t acted fast enough to prepare space for these folks.”

Asylum seekers come to the site after the expiration of their 30- and 60-day time limits on their stay in a shelter. Wait times can be as long as a week, as the city struggles to find available beds for the migrants — who in the meantime, sleep in makeshift shelters or on the streets.

For several days this week, the line was more than 1,000 people, said Assemblyman Harvey Epstein, whose office is across the street from the the re-ticketing site in the former St. Brigid School.

“This idea of looping people out every 30 days has created a crisis,” Epstein said. “And 95% of the people are still going back into shelter, so the reality is people aren’t taking the option to go someplace else, they’re staying here in New York. We need to have better solutions than just making people reapply for housing.”

The 30-day policy, established by Mayor Adams in September, was meant to free up space within the shelter system for new arrivals as they continue to pour into the city.

“I appreciate what the mayor is trying to do, but I don’t think this is the right solution,” Epstein said, adding that the city should work to find alternative spaces to house migrants and look for other solutions as the federal government stalls on expanding work permits.

More than 164,000 asylum seekers have come through New York City over the past year and a half, and around 67,000 of them remain in the city’s shelter system.

Adams has estimated that the city’s cost of offering them shelter and other services will run to $12 billion. He’s said city agencies will be pushed into crisis without federal help.

“People are still backlogged from the week before,” Mahmoodi said. “And we are incredibly stressed because next Friday, families with children, over 4,000 of them are going to get kicked out. So we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Palestine will be free!” said signs carried by some protesters, video of the event posted online showed.

The protest gathered at the library around 5:30 p.m. and then proceeded on W. 42nd St. toward Eighth Ave. The group arrived outside the Times building at about 6 p.m.

The protest broke up at around 7:20 p.m.

Organizers described the event as an “emergency protest” to call for a permanent ceasefire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict as Israeli airstrikes resumed.

Clashes broke out Wednesday between cops and protesters who sought to disrupt the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lighting ceremony, leading to several arrests.

Along with introducing a little brother to his two older siblings, Christine Fields’ parents and fiancé had to tell her two young kids that their mother was dead.

And what was supposed to be a joyous occasion filled with blessings and promise became a nightmare beset by anguish and pain.

“We were looking forward to a wedding this year,” said Jose Perez, Fields’ fiancé. “But she ended up pregnant and we put it on hold.”

He called Fields “a great mother.”

“She spent every minute she could with her kids,” he said.

The Fields family’s odyssey stretched over the course of three days that began on Nov. 11, when the pregnant woman walked into Brooklyn’s Woodhull Medical Center to deliver her baby boy.

The next day, according to the family, she had an emergency C-section over her objections, but was conscious and responsive after the baby was born.

The family left her room and was told later that Fields, 30, had died. They are awaiting an autopsy to determine a cause of death.

“Three children, ages 3, 5 and a newborn infant, will now be raised without a mother,’ said the family’s attorney Sanford Rubinstein. “This is tragic. This family had no reason to think this wasn’t going to be a healthy childbirth.”

The family’s lawsuit alleges that medical malpractice was responsible for Fields’ death, Rubenstein said.

According to lawyer Ira Newman, Rubenstein’s partner who specializes in malpractice cases, Fields had experienced a “normal” pregnancy with no complications.

After 10 hours of labor, the baby’s heart rate dropped and Fields was rushed in for the emergency C-section.

“Following the C-section, she went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced deceased at around 3 or 4 in the morning on Nov. 13,” Newman said.

A hospital spokesman declined to give information about Fields’ care, citing medical privacy laws.

“The health and safety of our patients is our highest priority, and we express our sincere condolences to those affected by this tragic loss,” the spokesman, Christopher Miller, said in a statement.

Fields’ mother Deneen Witherspoon said she needs answers.

“My daughter was healthy,” she said. “She was my heart. Now I have to help raise three kids that don’t have a mother.”

Josh Eisen, a Westchester County businessman and onetime congressional candidate, said he made the maximum allowable donation to Santos to help forge a GOP majority in the House of Representatives.

He was shocked to find out Santos allegedly diverted the cash for his own personal expenses as outlined in an Ethics Committee report.

“He stole $5,800 from me,” said Eisen, 51, who lives in Harrison. “He spent it on Botox and everything else.”

“He’s not a normal dude,” Eisen added.

Santos has long said he has not done anything wrong.

As Santos faces an imminent expulsion vote from Congress, Eisen say he isn’t suing to get his money back. The libertarian-leaning Republican admits knows it’s unlikely he’ll ever see a cent.

“The only way that’ll happen is if Santos gets rich by doing a reality show in prison,” Eisen said.

But he feels it’s important to speak out on behalf of small-dollar donors who wrongly believed in Santos.

“There’s a whole lot of $50 donors who got hurt a lot worse than me,” Eisen said.

Eisen said he was linked up with Santos by other Republican donors in the months leading up to the 2022 midterms.

He’s a prolific donor and hopes to use his money to nudge the GOP towards a more small-government policy perspective on many issues.

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Eisen admitted being hoodwinked by Santos’s inspirational life story about being a trailblazing gay conservative and the son of Brazilian immigrants who rose to the heights of the financial services industry.

Those claims were all lies.

“Like most donors, you believe the background that people tell you, ” Eisen said. “Most politicians do not flat-out lie. The dude wasn’t there at all.”

Eisen said he hasn’t spoken to Santos since he became a walking political punchline.

Along with the bogus resume, Santos is now accused of using donations for cringeworthy splurges on cosmetic procedures and luxe goods.

“It’s like going to mental institution and telling someone who is howling to bark like a dog,” he said. “I got nothing to say to him.”

The gunman fired a shot from his sixth-floor apartment window at police on 54th St. near 31st Ave. in Astoria at about 10:55 a.m., moments after he shot his building’s super during an argument, police said.

After the shot was fired out the window, cops confronted the gunman in his sixth-floor hallway, firing three shots at him but missing. The gunman ran into his apartment and locked himself inside, sparking a three-hour standoff.

At some point during the standoff, the gunman shot himself in the chest, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffery Maddrey said.

NYPD Emergency Service Unit cops put a small camera under the door and found the gunman was “lying on the floor yelling for help,” Maddrey said.

“We got him, get him to release the gun that is still in his hand, took him into custody and took him to a local hospital,” Maddrey said.

The gunman, an ex-con, was not immediately identified. Criminal charges against him were pending.

The drama began when the gunman was on the second floor of the apartment building arguing with the 48-year-old building super, witnesses said.

Building resident Avatar Singh said the gunman was holding the elevator door open as he argued with the victim, so Singh and his wife Jassi had to walk down the stairs from the fourth floor.

When they reached the lobby, multiple shots rang out, Jassi Singh said.

“We heard ‘Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!'” she recalled. “My husband said the elevator must be broken, but then the super is running down the stairs behind us yelling, ‘Call the ambulance!'”

A moment later, Jassi saw blood pooling underneath the super’s white shirt.

“I said, ‘Oh my God, this is a gun shooting,'” she said. “I said [to the super], ‘Please don’t close your eyes’ because … you know.”

Jassi and Avatar called 911 and helped the super out of the building as the gunman ran up to his sixth-floor apartment.

As cops arrived, the suspect stuck his head out a window and fired a shot, Maddrey said. Nobody was struck.

“He was shooting out the window onto the street,” Avatar Singh said. “The cops were screaming, ‘Go over there! Go over there!'”

Cops ran into the building and spotted the shooter, gun in hand, on the sixth floor, Maddrey said.

“One of the officers discharged his weapon three times and the [shooter] ran back into his apartment,” the chief said.

During the standoff, cops evacuated residents of neighboring apartments, Maddrey said.

“We knew we had him, but we had to worry about other people,” he said. “We had to worry about bullets coming through walls. Bullets coming from windows.”

NYPD negotiators and ESU cops tried to get the gunman to surrender, but he wouldn’t relent, Maddrey said, adding that drones were flown by his apartment window to keep tabs on him during the standoff.

It was not immediately clear how badly the gunman was wounded when he shot himself, cops said. The super he shot was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he was expected to recover.

A building resident who gave his name as Jeffrey said the gunman “did not get along with the super.”

But the super “was cool with this guy. He knew he had problems with him, and he tried to stay away from it.”

With Sheetal Banchariya

Akebulon Reeves, 34, was blasted multiple times in the torso on E. 119th St. near Third Ave. shortly after 10 a.m., according to cops.

Medics rushed the Central Harlem resident to Metropolitan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Witnesses said they observed a masked shooter open fire on the victim before jumping on the back of a scooter being operated by someone else.

There have been no arrests.

A local resident said he administered medical aid before police and paramedics arrived.

“I heard three or four shots. I heard people screaming. I saw people running,” said Joshua Scott, who lives nearby. ”I have a little bit of medical training. I ran downstairs and did compressions on him and tried to get some pressure on the bleeding. Then the NYPD and EMS took it from there.”

Another witness said the gunman could have done more damage if he didn’t have problems with his weapon.

“He shot three times and his gun jammed,” the witness said. “He jumped on the scooter, and they blew through the light and took off.”

The value of the illicit goods was placed at around half a million dollars, according to city Sheriff Anthony Miranda.

Officials said they were acting on community complaints including allegations that products sold at the “Weed World” store on Seventh Ave. near W. 36th St. made customers ill.

The raid by Miranda’s team and officials from the New York State Office of Cannabis Management happened around 1:15 p.m.

Two individuals believed to be associated with the shop were arrested for weapons possession, Miranda said.

State officials were expected to seize all of the illegal products and some will be tested, Miranda said.

Customers had complained of “adverse effects” from products they bought at the illegal shop, according to Miranda.

On Thursday, one woman recalled visiting the store in November and asking a worker for something that wasn’t too strong that would get her high. The employee suggested a lollipop, so she tried it.

“I licked it three or four times and I couldn’t get myself together,” said the woman, who only wanted to be identified as Christina. “Then I met some friends and they said, ‘I’m sorry, but you don’t look OK. Can you get home?’ And I barely got home.”

“It wasn’t THC. It was something else … I wasn’t relaxed. It was dangerous,” she added.

Officers “found all kinds of products downstairs” and evidence”indicating that they are self-packaging with other labels on it, as well, that don’t necessarily say it comes from their location,” Miranda said.

“They have been issued violations. There will be fines,” he added. “There will be ongoing investigations. And this is just one of many that are going to be continued.”

Thursday’s raid was the latest effort from local law enforcement to crack down on illegal pot shops that have cropped up all over the city since the state legalized recreational pot.

The Sheriff’s Office conducted 162 raids on unlicensed smoke shops from January to April, making 46 arrests and issuing 249 notices of violations, according to Miranda.

Some $6.7 million worth of product has been seized, he said.

The victim was jogging in the traffic lane on the West Drive near W. 66th St. just before 8 a.m. when a 50-year-old man riding a bike slammed into her, cops said.

The woman was rushed to an area hospital, where she was listed in critical condition.

The bicyclist remained at the scene. No charges were immediately filed.

Space for pedestrians, cyclists and others using the park’s drive at the crash scene was narrowed because of preparations for the New York City Marathon on Nov. 6. Workers are building reviewing stands and other marathon facilities in the area.

Cops are investigating if this re-routing of bicycle and pedestrian traffic could have sparked the crash, police sources said.