Cops: Woman with gun overreacts to prank

A Rockville Centre woman captured and held for police a teenage suspect at gunpoint, but when officers arrived, they arrested her, not the teen, Nassau police said.

Bernadette Greenwald, 47, of 171 N. Forest Ave., was charged with menacing, reckless endangerment and prohibited use of a dangerous weapon, police said, after she apparently overreacted to a prankster repeatedly ringing her doorbell Sunday night.

Three times someone rang Greenwald's doorbell around 11 p.m., police said, and three times she went to answer it, and nobody was there.

After the third time, Greenwald got her 9-mm handgun, police said, then went outside to catch the culprit.

“At some point she lets a round go off in front of the house,” said Officer Christopher Barling, a Nassau police spokesman. “A couple of minutes later, she sees a 17-year-old young man walking down the street and she points the gun at him, and holds him at gunpoint until police arrive.”

But police determined that the teenager she apprehended had nothing to do with the “ring and run” prank, Barling said. So they released him and arrested her.