ment. She therefore prevailed upon the superintendent to open the locked door, which he did with the aid of a Venetian blind slat. After remaining in the apartment for a short time, she and the superintendent departed and the latter automatically locked the door in the manner which he had previously employed. The .mother proceeded to the precinct and, after again failing to ascertain the whereabouts of the two uniformed officers who had investigated the burglary, called her husband, who expressed his concern that their son, a jewelry salesman, might have been abducted by the burglar. At this point the mother conveyed her concern and that of her husband to two detectives, explaining that the door to the apartment had been discovered ajar, that the bedroom light had been left on overnight, that her son’s car was still in its garage, and that he had failed to keep a scheduled appointment. The mother was thereupon advised to file a missing person report, and while she was in the process of doing so, the detectives proceeded, at approximately 3:30 p.m., to the defendant’s apartment house. Upon their arrival at the apartment house, the two detectives met the defendant’s mother, and, together with the superintendent, proceeded to the defendant’s apartment, where they found the front door ajar. They thereupon entered the apartment and saw drugs and drug paraphernalia in plain view. Shortly thereafter, the defendant came running into the apartment in a highly excited state and immediately exclaimed that “his life was ruined, his jewelry was stolen” (it appears from the record that the defendant had met the superintendent and was told of the burglary before he reached his apartment). Defendant’s outburst when he first entered the apartment, i.e., that “his life was ruined”, was related solely to his discovery of the burglary. The detectives immediately arrested defendant for possession of drugs and, after being given
Miranda rights, which he acknowledged that he understood, the defendant again stated that his life was ruined because of the stolen jewelry and also stated that “he only kept it [the drugs] for himself”. A search of a pouch carried by the defendant also disclosed a small amount of marijuana and cocaine. In denying defendant’s motion to suppress the physical evidence and his statements, Criminal Term, as the trier of fact, accepted the testimony of Detective McNamara and made two critical findings of fact: (1) that the detectives found the door to the defendant’s apartment ajar and thereupon entered the apartment; and (2) that upon their entry into the apartment, the detectives saw the contraband and paraphernalia in plain view. Although the testimony on these two matters (as well as other collateral matters) was seriously impeached at trial, Criminal Term’s findings of fact, which were based on the testimony of Detective McNamara, do have support in the record and have been accepted by this court for the purpose of resolving the issues on this appeal. Criminal Term held that the detectives entered the apartment lawfully because of the mother’s desire to have them investigate the burglary and to pursue her missing person report. We affirm. In
People v Cohen (
87 AD2d 77 , 82-83, affd
58 NY2d 844 ), this court held that: “when a constitutionally protected area becomes the scene of a crime, the police may subject the premises to a preliminary search and inspection whose scope and duration must be limited by and reasonably related to the exigencies of the situation.
Once that preliminary investigation has come to an end, however, no further searches for evidence may be conducted on the premises unless authorized by a warrant’ (emphasis supplied). While
People v Cohen (supra) would clearly bar a subsequent re-entry into the defendant’s apartment in a case such as this for the ostensible purpose of continuing the
burglary investigation, in our view the situation is markedly different where, as here, the police are subsequently presented with reasonable cause to believe that the premises in question may also have been the situs of another crime with life-threatening potential, to wit: a kidnapping. Thus, the detectives in this case were person