STRATEGIC PARTNERS
May 6, 2003
NEW YORK -- Ralphie Salas, a 33-year-old Bronx doorman who spent five days in jail after a bank gave police the wrong surveillance tape, has been cleared, according to a report in the New York Daily News.
It took nearly five months -- and an ATM receipt -- for Salas to prove he did not rob several elderly women.
Salas turned himself in last November after his picture -- from a bank security camera -- was shown in newspapers and on television.
A time-stamped ATM receipt from Sept. 10, 2002, showed Salas used the machine moments before Tyrone Felton, the man now under arrest in the robberies, made a withdrawal with a stolen debit card. After prosecutors saw Salas' receipt, they learned the bank gave them the wrong tape.
Instead of tape from the camera at the ATM, the Parkchester HSBC branch gave police tape from an outside camera that showed Salas as he paused to make a cell phone call. Police used an image from that tape to find Salas.
"Luckily for Ralphie, he's a pack rat," Salas' attorney, Howard Levine, told the Daily News. "He had kept every ATM receipt he ever received."
After he surrendered, Salas was charged with robbery and assault and held at Rikers Island on $35,000 bail. Prosecutors agreed to a reduction of his bail after seeing the receipt but did not officially clear him until April 22.
Salas lost his job as a doorman while the case was still pending.
"Life is very scary to me now. I was an innocent guy who got caught up in the system," Salas told the Daily News.
