BROOKLYN

* A robber smashed a glass booth in a Crown Heights shoe store, injuring the owner, authorities said yesterday.

Sources said Randy Taylor, 50, stepped up to the owner, who was behind the booth in the store at Nostrand Avenue near Pacific Street, at 1:27 p.m. Tuesday.

When Taylor allegedly demanded $20 for cigarettes, the owner refused.

Taylor then allegedly threatened to toss a glass and wooden bench through the booth. The owner told him to get lost.

Taylor picked up the bench and hurled it through the glass, shattering it and sending pieces flying into the owner’s face, police said.

The owner, who suffered a cut nose, quickly coughed up $20 and gave it Taylor, who fled.

Police were called and arrested Taylor that day after a struggle, the sources said.

* A man was arrested for beating and molesting a woman on a subway platform in Crown Heights, authorities said yesterday.

Joseph Montgomery, 55, allegedly grabbed the buttocks of the 22-year-old woman as she was walking on the No. 4-line platform of the Utica Avenue station at about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, sources said.

The woman spun around and saw Montgomery, who had been standing behind her, the sources said.

When she asked what he was doing, he gave an incoherent response and allegedly hit her in the face.

After someone broke up the confrontation, Montgomery tried to get away by jumping on a train, the sources said. But the victim notified a conductor and Montgomery was arrested a short time later.

THE BRONX

* The rotting human head discovered behind a gas station near Van Cortlandt Park belonged to a man whose remains were found in a Riverdale trash heap on Christmas Eve, police said yesterday.

The head of 50-year-old Jorge Valdez was spotted by a worker at a Mobil station on the southbound side of Major Deegan Expressway at 11 a.m. on Jan. 12, cops said.

Nearly three weeks earlier, a homeless man found Valdez’s torso and leg while picking through a trash heap at West 262nd Street and Broadway.

Valdez, of 2840 Bailey Ave., had been fatally stabbed in the chest, a spokeswoman for the Medical Examiner’s Office said.

* A young man was shot to death in a Melrose bodega, police said yesterday.

Laurice Arthur, 19, was standing in the Power Deli Grocery Store at Courtlandt Avenue and East 154th Street when an unidentified gunman walked up to him at about 10 p.m. Tuesday, cops said.

Arthur was shot in the neck, left arm and behind the left ear for reasons that were not immediately clear, police said.

Arthur was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, where he died.

* A second suspect has been arrested in the fatal shooting of a young man during an apparent drug-related attack in Edenwald, sources said yesterday.

Carlos Chavez, 17, was arrested Tuesday and charged with murder in the shooting death of Jelani Merrick, 22, at East 226th Street near La- conia Avenue on Jan. 9, cops said.

At about 9:22 p.m., Chavez and an accomplice, Melvin Orange, 20, shot Merrick in the chest and back, police said.

Merrick was rushed to Jacobi Hospital, where he died. Orange was captured on Jan. 11 and charged with murder.

STATEN ISLAND

* A truant student was arrested after police caught him with a knife outside a St. George high school, police sources said yesterday.

Erwin Guzman, 16, was caught outside Curtis HS on Hamilton Avenue at about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, the sources said.

Guzman allegedly cursed at the officers and tried to run away. But police grabbed him and, as they cuffed him, Guzman flailed his arms, the sources said.

Cops searched him and found the knife, they said.