Teen beaten, robbed of rare instruments

Police have recov­ered the stolen prop­erty of a vis­it­ing teen who was robbed and roughed up in an attack late last week.

Aidan Feld­man, 16, of Williams­burg, Va., was mugged by a group of teens around 8:15 p.m. near McDonald’s on Thurs­day evening.

Aidan was vis­it­ing Ober­lin with his father, David Feld­man, who is the eco­nom­ics depart­ment chair at the Col­lege of William and Mary.

“I was in Ober­lin on Thurs­day to speak to a meet­ing of the Ober­lin Col­lege trustees. I brought my 16-year-old son along with me to visit the col­lege and Con­ser­va­tory,” said David Feld­man. “The admis­sions office went way beyond the call of duty to arrange a remark­able day for him.”

David Feld­man said his son met with pro­fes­sors from a num­ber of depart­ments and spent time with Baroque flute pro­fes­sor Kathie Stew­art at the Conservatory.

“She had asked him to bring his instru­ments so they could ‘jam’ together,” David Feld­man said.

After din­ner with sev­eral Ober­lin stu­dents, Aidan decided to wan­der around town for a while as his father talked with the trustees.

“Accord­ing to a writ­ten state­ment pro­vided by the juve­nile vic­tim, he was walk­ing north­bound on South Main Street, near Lin­coln Street at approx­i­mately 8:15 p.m. The juve­nile vic­tim advised he walked past a group of 5-6 males approx­i­mately 15-19 years old who were walk­ing south­bound,” said Lt. Michael McCloskey, of the Ober­lin Police Depart­ment. “After the he walked past them, he was hit in the side of the head and fell to the ground. The vic­tim fur­ther stated he got back up and was thrown to the ground which caused his eye­glasses to fall off.”

Dur­ing the assault, a red back­pack which Aidan was car­ry­ing was stolen. The back­pack con­tained mis­cel­la­neous cloth­ing, a first gen­er­a­tion iPod, a 1948 sil­ver Haynes Flute in a leather case, and a hand­made Irish whistle.

Aidan was able to give offi­cers accu­rate descrip­tions of the attack­ers, accord­ing to McCloskey.

“One male was black and wore a green polo shirt and jeans. The vic­tim also stated two of the males appeared to be His­panic with sleeve­less shirts, and 2-3 were white,” McCloskey said. “One wore a baggy T-shirt with shorts and was heavy­set. The vic­tim stated all the indi­vid­u­als had short hair, and one of the white males was tall and skinny with blond hair.”

Accord­ing to David Feld­man, the flute had belonged to his son’s first teacher, a man named Burt Kester, who taught at the Col­lege of William and Mary, who spent his sum­mers in Ohio play­ing with the Lake­side Sym­phony Orches­tra. When Kester died in 2010, his fam­ily offered the flute to Aidan.

“Aidan was his very last stu­dent, and Burt had worked with Aidan since he was eight,” said David Feld­man. “I still remem­ber Burt say­ing, ‘He’s eight. He’s a boy who wants to study the flute…he’s mine.’”

David Feld­man had the flute fully restored to its 1940s glory, and it became Aidan’s per­for­mance instru­ment, and accord­ing to his father, his friend.

“Now it’s gone,” David Feld­man said.

The ser­ial num­ber of the flute is 19310.

On Tues­day, Feld­man was con­tacted by Ober­lin PD and informed the back­pack had been recov­ered, along with some of Aidan’s cloth­ing and the Irish whis­tle in the woods near where the assault occured. Later that evening, police con­tacted David Feld­man, say­ing they had also recov­ered the stolen flute.

Accord­ing to David Feld­man, the Ober­lin PD said they had been able to iden­tify one of the attack­ers through Aidan’s descrip­tion. The alleged per­pa­tra­tor was brought in and even­tu­ally told police where the flute had been hidden.

The city prosecutor’s office is cur­rently hold­ing the flute as evi­dence in the case, and it’s unclear when Aidan will be able to recover his prop­erty. Feld­man said his son’s lip is still split from the attack, so he’s not in a mood to prac­tice anyway.

“The police did a lot of leg­work to get this case solved so quickly,” David Feld­man said. “They deserve a lot of praise for their professionalism.”

Posted by Scott Mahoney on Jun 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.