The Queens home of JetBlue looney Steven Slater was burglarized by his live-in boyfriend’s brother, authorities said this afternoon.
Jonathan Rochelle, 39, broke into the apartment brother Kenneth shares with Slater on Beach 128th Street in Belle Harbor sometime between Oct. 14th and 18th; the heist was reported to cops at 4:30 p.m. Monday, a day before Slater was due in court to deal with charges related to him yanking the emergency hatch on a JetBlue plane last August, sources said.
Rochelle was arrested and charged with burglary yesterday for allegedly stealing a laptop computer, printer and power cord. Law enforcement sources said Rochelle, who lives on Beach 130th Street, just blocks away from his brother and Slater, entered Slater’s home though a back window.
He’s expected to be arraigned later today.
“I was just on the phone with him — he called me to make bail,” dad Robert Rochelle, 69, said this afternoon. “But I’m not gonna do it. I’m disappointed in him.”
His brother Kenneth was a bit more forgiving, telling reporters, “We’re good,” when asked about his feelings about his bad-boy sib.
Slater, 38, pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of attempted criminal mischief.
He was accused of cursing over his plane’s public-address system when the craft landed at JFK Airport after a flight from Pittsburgh, deploying the emergency chute, grabbing a beer and then sliding down to safety.
Slater claimed a confrontation with a rude passenger set him off, but some other passengers disputed his story. His high-powered Hollywood publicist yesterday insisted his client can still fly his old airline — as a passenger.
But JetBlue would only say Slater was no longer working for the company.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown scolded Slater — and the public — for not taking his actions more seriously, noting that the chute deployment cost the airline $25,000 and that the plane had to be taken out of service afterward, causing flight delays.
“In spite of the fact that many had treated the defendant as somewhat of a folk hero … deploying the escape chute from a passenger-filled aircraft was no laughing matter,” Brown said.
“It could have resulted in serious injury, perhaps even death, to the passengers or workers on the tarmac.”