______________ VALLEY STREAM _____________
SPRING FORWARD at 2 a.m. on Sunday. Remember to change your smoke detector batteries.
HERALD Infections as of March 7
6,876
CoMMuNIty uPDAtE
Infections as of Feb. 26 6,653
$1.00
local gym raises money for vets
Primark to take over J.C. Penney
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MARCH 11 - 17, 2021
Vol. 32 No. 11
OBITUARY
‘The business was his life’ Walter Itgen, founder of Itgen’s Ice Cream Parlor, dies at 88 clouds,” Walter Jr.’s fiancee, Reine Emeish, said. In his early 20s, Itgen worked Walter Itgen, a German immi- at various Long Island delis after grant, master chocolatier and gaining sponsorship from an businessman who founded Walt uncle who lived in Garden City, Itgen’s Ice Cream Parlor, a Valley Michael said. He also worked setStream institution on ting up pins at a Rockaway Avenue for bowling alley at one more than half a cenpoint, and in 1956 he tury, died on Jan. 31. enlisted in the Army He was 88. for two years as a Itgen was defined paratrooper in the by his hard work and 82nd Airborne Dividedication to the sion, stationed in businesses that he North Carolina. operated with his late When he rewife, Marg aret, turned, he was left according to his sons, with the choice of Michael and Walter either attending colWalter Itgen Jr. He came to the lege with the money United States in the he had saved or going mid-1950s in pursuit of the Amer- into business, Walter Jr. said. He ican dream, leaving his life chose the latter. behind there after helping to “He always wanted to be a rebuild his war-torn home coun- business owner,” his son said. try as a bricklayer. Itgen met his future wife, Mar“He would always look at the garet Magner, an immigrant from sky and wanted to see the world,” Ireland, at a dance in Mineola. Walter Jr. said. “It was either the “That’s what you did back then — United States or Australia, and it you went to dances to meet peoended up being the United ple,” Walter Jr. said. “My father States.” loved to dance.” “He wanted to travel like the Continued on page 23
By PEtER BElFIoRE pbelfiore@liherald.com
Melissa Koenig/Herald
GEoRGE BlAttI, A former doctor who was operating out of an abandoned Radio Shack in Franklin Square, was escorted into the Nassau County Courthouse in Mineola on March 4. He was charged in the deaths of five of his patients.
Doctor charged with murder Officials: Five patients overdosed on opioids By MElIssA KoENIG mkoenig@liherald.com
Geraldine Sabatasso was a smoker with a history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who began seeing Franklin Square-based Dr. George Blatti in 2007 for acute pain she suffered as a result of a neck surgery. He started prescribing her opioids in 2010, and by February 2016, Nassau County prosecutors said, she started complaining of dizziness and shortness of breath, but still, they allege,
Blatti continued to prescribe Sabatasso, of Baldwin, opioids. She died on March 22, 2016, at age 50. Among the other four patients to die under Blatti’s watch were residents of Valley Stream, Hempstead and Floral Park, according to prosecutors. Blatti prescribed the drugs from a number of locations, authorities said, including an old Radio Shack in Franklin Square and the parking lots of a hotel in Rockville Centre, where he lived at the time,
and a nearby fast-food restaurant. Now Blatti, 75, originally from Malverne, faces murder and reckless endangerment charges for overprescribing opioids to Sabatasso and the four other victims, who died between 2016 and 2018, Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced on March 4. Blatti was charged with five counts of second-degree murder and 11 counts of reckless endangerment, in addiContinued on page 24