Disabled vet says town threw out all his belongings

A disabled Korean War veteran who lives in a government-subsidized apartment in Manhasset is suing the Town of North Hempstead Housing Authority for throwing out all his belongings.

Jim McCann, 79, said he returned to his apartment in October - after a heart attack and a month in the hospital - to find it empty. Everything - from his shower curtain to pictures of his grandchildren to his Navy uniform - was gone, even a medal won during a boxing match when he was 18 - "my most prized possession."

But to the town, the apartment posed a health and safety risk because of clutter, filth, mice and rats. "There was nothing but garbage in the unit," Sean Rainey, executive director of the housing authority, asserted Thursday.

The East Shore Road building, owned by the housing authority, is home to mostly senior citizens, and all units needed to be treated for bed bugs in September, Rainey said. He said officials repeatedly notified McCann to clear out the clutter before the extermination.

And since 2004, officials have warned him about what they said was floor-to-ceiling clutter and filth, Rainey said.

But McCann's son said the contents were simply his dad's clutter. "It was literature, books, artwork," Wayne McCann said. "They were mementos. . . . For them to say it was rat-infested, that's completely untrue."

The McCanns said they should have been given time to retrieve meaningful items such as wedding photos and military medals. But Rainey said, "There was nothing they could save," adding that one man on the cleaning crew became "sick to his stomach" from the stench.

The town had "just cause," Rainey said: "We needed to get in there to clean. We tried to arrange it with him. We tried to arrange it with his family." Wayne McCann said he was never contacted. "They did this while he was conveniently away having heart surgery," the son said.

Jim McCann, a retired construction worker, spent his first night back from the hospital on the floor of the empty studio apartment, and has since accumulated replacement furniture. But he said his precious memorabilia can never be replaced.

McCann, who has lived in the building for 17 years and pays $255 a month in rent, hired Mineola lawyer Lloyd Nadel, who filed a notice of claim in November, which initiates a lawsuit. Nadel said a hearing in the town attorney's office is scheduled for next Friday.