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On July 1, in the sleepy hamlet of East Setauket, Long Island, Christian Antonelli and his wife, Christine Licata, were feeling the holiday spirit three days early. They set off a cluster of fireworks, showering the area with blackened debris, including the yard of their next-door neighbor David Halstead, who promptly called the cops.
The next day, Halstead says, Antonelli and Licata retaliated by setting off more. Then, for good measure, they did it again. And again. For two months, “like three, four times a day,” the explosions never stopped, he claims.
“It’s not a normal amount of fireworks. It’s not your, you know, the pretty ones,” says another East Setauket resident, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid becoming a target.