Firefighter Damone Lapene now faces obstruction and grand larceny charges after getting into the dispute on Junction Boulevard in Jackson Heights at around 2 p.m. yesterday, law-enforcement sources said.
Lapene, 25, parked his car at a bus stop while stopping for Chinese take-out, the sources said.When he got back, he found a parking ticket on the windshield - he then drove off, came back on foot and began to argue with the traffic agent.
He announced that he was a fireman and demanded to speak to the agent's supervisor.
Sources said that when the ticket agent started writing another summons, Lapene grabbed the agent's radio and hurled it onto the roof of a nearby building, saying, "Now you can't call anyone!"
Lapene ran off but later turned himself in at the 115th precinct, sources said.
"It just threw me off when I found out because it's very unlike him," said his uncle Joseph Darden, 56, who lives with Lapene just blocks away from where the bizarre altercation took place. "He's a good boy. He's very responsible."
Darden said his nephew, who works in Ladder Co. 3 in Lower Manhattan, was in the first first class to graduate from the Fire Academy after the 9/11 attacks.
