Opinion
June 9, 1986
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Kings County (Broomer, J.).
Judgment affirmed.
At the time that the police officers confronted the defendant, they knew by following wet footsteps on a dry pavement, emanating from a large puddle of water which was on the pavement, that the perpetrator of the attempted burglary they were investigating had fled only moments before into the lobby of a nearby apartment building through a partially opened window. The defendant was the only person in that lobby and when the officers approached him they observed that he was out of breath, perspiring, and that his feet were wet. These articulable facts justified the officers' actions in approaching and questioning him (see, People v Carney, 58 N.Y.2d 51, 53). His patently false explanation of his presence in the building, that he was visiting a friend whose name he did not give, and that he ran down six flights of stairs to the lobby despite the existence of an elevator in the building, corroborated the officers' suspicions and raised those suspicions to the level of probable cause (see, People v. Thurman, 81 A.D.2d 548; People v. Hernandez, 77 A.D.2d 548; see also, People v. Donello, 103 A.D.2d 781) by providing indicia of criminal activity on the part of the defendant equivalent to the secretive behavior of the defendant in People v. Grant ( 83 A.D.2d 277). Criminal Term therefore correctly denied that branch of the defendant's omnibus motion which was to suppress the physical evidence seized at the scene and the statements he subsequently made to the police. Lazer, J.P., Brown, Rubin and Eiber, JJ., concur.