Cops: Queens robber nabbed in jacked car

Alert cops in two northeast Queens precincts put a quick end to an upstate man's drug-fueled crime spree that briefly terrorized the Bayside area a week ago, officials said.

Rolf Rehbein, 41, was grabbed by police after he drove a late-model Nissan Maxima he had carjacked minutes earlier onto a sidewalk at the Clearview Expressway service road and 36th Avenue, according to New York Police Department investigators. Police disclosed the arrest late Wednesday.

The episode began about 7:40 p.m. last Friday when Rehbein got into the driver's seat of the car - to the surprise of a 62-year-old Queens woman in the passenger seat waiting for her husband to return from a Bayside hardware store on Northern Boulevard, police said.

"I have a knife, don't move," Rehbein told the startled woman as he began to drive away, according to investigators. The woman managed to exit the moving vehicle and call 911.

Twelve blocks away, officers at the 111th Precinct spotted Rehbein driving the Maxima and corralled him as he tried to drive away on a sidewalk. Police sent out a radio alert that they found a knife on the front seat, leading officers in the adjacent 109th Precinct to suspect Rehbein might be the suspect in knifepoint robberies totaling about $560 in the past 24 hours.

According to a criminal court complaint, Rehbein admitted under questioning that he had held up a Bayside dry cleaner and four other locations.

"I don't remember how I got there or how I left but I did get money to feed my drug habit," Rehbein said of the dry cleaner robbery, according to the complaint.

"We were fortunate we could get him into custody before he got more drug crazed and got somebody hurt," NYPD Capt. Ronald Leyson, commander of the 111th Precinct, told Newsday.

Rehbein, of upstate Hillsdale and Flushing, pleaded not guilty at arraignment Monday and is being held on $100,000 bail.