Well here's one you don't hear everyday! A former principal at the Bronx Adult Learning Center has admitted to hiring movers in 2009 and having them take a Weber grand piano that had been donated to the school back to his home so he could tickle its ivories in peace. In lieu of punishment, the city's Conflicts of Interest Board announced yesterday that the principal resigned, had returned the piano to the school and agreed to pay a $1,000 fine. Which means he gets to keep his pension.
58-year-old Amoye Neblett, whose website is best viewed using Netscape Navigator, took the piano two years after it had been donated to the school by a teacher—a teacher who noticed it had gone missing from the school within months. When she asked Neblett about it, he told her he took it home, and when she freaked out he tried to persuade her it was because they couldn't keep it in the school. She called his bluff though and contacted authorities, according to the COIB. Neblett later returned the piano and resigned.
All of which is to say, don't steal grand pianos. Somebody will definitely notice. And for what it is worth, Neblett says it didn't quite go the way that the COIB says it did:
“That’s just ridiculous; it didn’t happen like that,” he insisted, speaking from his front door in a sleeveless undershirt. “In the position I have, in all the years of service that I’ve given to children and to the adult community, why would I steal a grand piano? It just doesn’t make sense. Anyone who knows me knows that wouldn’t be true. I don’t steal anything.”
