By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – Zip Code 07114 as of Jan. 4, has joined 07105 and parts of 07104 and 07107 as a city COVID-19 “hot spot” through Feb. 1.
07114 runs from the East Ward’s “South Ironbound” neighborhood northern border to largely west along Elizabeth Avenue to the Elizabeth border and the Newark Bay waterfront and back to South Ironbound via New Jersey Turnpike’s Exit 13 A Interchange.
That area includes all of Newark Liberty International Airport, Port Newark, the Dayton neighborhood and Weequahic Park. It adjoins 07105, “North Ironbound” a zip code that extends north along Route 21/McCarter Highway to the Passaic River.
Mayor Ras Baraka, in his Jan. 4 Executive Order extension, cited rising COVID infection and death rates to add a fourth zip code.
“The need to extend the curfew is essential,” said Baraka. “Although vaccines have been and are being developed at a pace never experienced in this nation’s history, and are being administered to essential workers, we can’t become complacent or lax in our fight against the virus. We must continue to be vigilant in wearing our masks, practicing social distancing, washing our hands frequently and getting tested frequently.”
People in 07114 are to also be off the streets 9 p.m. – 5 p.m. weekdays and 10 p.m. – 5 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Exceptions will be made for those commuting to and from work or in emergencies. All “non-essential” businesses are to close 8 p.m. – 5 a.m. daily.
IRVINGTON – At least six weapons possession counts apparently made the difference between one Tremont Terrace resident being out on monitoring conditions for part of the year-end holidays – and the other remaining held in Newark’s Essex County Corrections Center.
The New Jersey State Police Crime Suppression North Unit had arrested Kevin C. Brown, 48, and Tyesha St.-Louis, 42, while executing a search warrant on St.-Louis’ address there Dec. 22.
Their search also yielded a handgun, two assault rifles, about 6.5 grams of cocaine and 83 grams of heroin plus about 136 oxycodone pills. The NJSP unit, after a month’s investigation, was assisted by the State Police’s K-9 and TEAMS North units.
Both Brown and St. Louis were each charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession thereof within 1,000 feet of a school, possession with intent to distribute, possession of CDS paraphernalia, money laundering and possession of a weapon during a CDS offence. The address was near the Berkeley, Grove Street and University Irvington Public Schools.
St. Louis, according to the NJSP Jan. 8 release, was freed on pretrial monitoring. Details, like whether she is wearing an ankle bracelet, were not disclosed.
Brown, however, is being held on six more charges: two counts of unlawful rifle possession plus a count each of unlawful handgun possession, possession of a high-capacity magazine, possession of a defaced firearm and weapon possession while a convicted felon.
EAST ORANGE – A city woman faces assault charges after going on a car window smashing, kicking and spitting spree against a relative and Montclair police Jan. 8.
The first MPD unit, said township police Sgt. Terence Turner, arrived at Mission Street 1:24 a.m. on a report of two women fighting on that street.
They were met by the caller, who said she saw the other woman smash the front and rear windshields of her cousin’s curbside parked car with a metal pipe while screaming profanity. When she confronted the smasher, the suspect then beat her with the pipe.
When the officers questioned and then arrested the other woman – identified as Jannah Asante, 24, she allegedly spat in one officer’s face and kicked the other while they were putting her in her car. Her victim was meanwhile taken to Mountainside Hospital for treatment of facial injuries.
“Local Talk” readers may recall that Asante had been charged by Hoboken police March 31, 2019 with third and fourth degree aggravated assault of a police officer, aggravated assault of an EMT, simple assault and resisting arrest. She was accused at that time of punching a pedestrian. spitting into a medic’s face and grabbing an HPD officer’s neck.
Asante has been charged Jan. 8 with aggravated assault, aggravated assault of a police officer, unlawful possession of a weapon and possession thereof for an unlawful purpose.
ORANGE – Local Lyft driver Bazoo Aibangbee perhaps got the surprise of his life Jan. 5 when he and his passenger turned west from Cleveland Street onto Alden Street – and were pulled over by multiple Orange police cars and officers.
Aibangbee told OPD and at a Jan. 6 press conference that he had picked up his ride, identified as Malik G. Tory, along Montclair’s part of Bloomfield Avenue and was directed into Orange’s North Ward. Aibangbee had just turned his white 2019 Kia Forte off Washington Street when Tory told him to stop in front of 387 Cleveland St. and left to meet another man there.
Members of OPD’s Street Crimes, Gang and Narcotic Task Force said they were on a stakeout the last month on drug trafficking complaints by neighbors when they saw the Kia with its lighted Lyft sign stop there.
Tory and the other man briefly talked before OPD said Tork handed the latter cash in exchange for “an unknown item” Tory then “stuffed the item in the crotch of his pants and reboarded the northbound Kia.
Officers who stopped the Kia at 373 Alden St. said they saw Tory “trying to conceal something” when they ordered him out. Tory then dropped what was identified as a 9 mm. Ruger LCP handgun while leaving the car.
“The next thing I knew they tackled him down because he had tried to run,” said Aibangbee. “That’s when I tried to record it on the phone. Somehow a car slowed down by the cops and he tried to run away (but) the cops caught him real quick.”
Tory, who has been charged with narcotics and wea[pons possession, is in local custody. Aigbangbee’s cell phone video was first aired on News12NJ early Jan. 6 after Orange Police Director Todd Warren and Commanding Officer Vincent Vitiello’s early Wednesday conference.
WEST ORANGE – Checking whether the township’s public schools are on track for a Jan. 19 reopening for in-person learning is a priority for the newly-reorganized West Orange Board of Education.
WOBOE’s latest member, Melinda Huerta, was sworn-in at their annual reorganization meeting Jan. 7. Huerta, who a majority of participating registered Nov. 3 voters elected over then-Board President Ken Alper, thanked her supporters in English and Spanish.
The new panel then elected Terry Trigg-Scales to succeed Alper as president. Trigg-Scales had most recently been an interim Montclair High School principal. Jennifer Tunnicliffe was picked as vice president.
WOPS Superintendent of Schools Dr. Scott Cascone will have the opportunity to brief the new board at their Jan. 13 meeting on whether the district will return to hybrid remote/in-person learning on Jan. 19.
Cascone, citing concerns of a COVID infection spike Nov. 2, had postponed a Nov. 9 reopening. A change.org petition has meanwhile been attracting signatures to urge for a Jan. 19 reopening.
SOUTH ORANGE – Villagers Elissa Maplespina and Courtney Winkfield, Maplewoodians Susan Bergin and Kamal Zubieta, the other five South Orange-Maplewood School District Board of Education Schools Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor may be responding to planned Noon Jan. 13 teacher walkouts and rallies when you read this.
Winkfield, Bergin, Malespina and Zubieta, who was elected to the board Nov. 3 were first sworn-in. Jan. 6. The new board then selected Thair Johnson as their president and, for 2021, Shannon Cuttle and Erin Siders as respective first and second vice presidents.
They later listened to Dr. Taylor’s reading an appeal letter from the South Orange-Maplewood Education Association. SOMEA officials, citing their having to wait their Tier 1B turn for COVID vaccinations, asked the district to postpone implementing the virtual/in-person hybrid learning model. The district’s “Phase 4” model was to launch Jan. 19.
Taylor, however, sent a late Jan. 12 community-wide e-mail saying he is going to partially start Phase 4. All English language learners, special education, Pre-Kindergarten-Second Grade and 6-9 Grade students are to either report to their designated laptops or classrooms Jan. 19.
The superintendent, however, has put off bringing the rest of the student body into school buildings from Jan. 25 into sometime next month. Taylor said he was partially postponing on “local COVID transmission rates and the county’s (orange) Regional Risk Level.”
Taylor may also be responding to Jan. 12 social media reports that SOMEA members will walk out of their scheduled Phase 4 preparations in their schools Noon Jan. 13. They are to then join supportive parents in protest rallies in front of their schools.
MAPLEWOOD – Authorities are still sorting out the circumstances surrounding the Jan. 4 death of The Top resident Gwen Avrut here while her family has posted her obituary in Jan. 11’s “New York Times.”
Livingston’s Bernheim-Apter-Kreitzman Suburban Funeral Chapel, acting on the family’s behalf, submitted a simple death notice in Sunday’s “Times.” It stated that Gwen Ruth Avrut, who was born Dec. 29, 1950, was survived by daughter Melany Avrut-Orgera, grandson Jagger and brother Dr. Keith Gurland, among others. Her Facebook page lists the Bayonne High School graduate studied at the University of Maryland-College Park.
No public services were announced. A private funeral, depending on the Avrut’s level of observance. may have already been held at BAK Chapel.
The ECPO Homicide Task Force is meanwhile talking with the third person who was with son Benjamin Avrut and the late Gwen Avrut 12:50 – 1:20 p.m. in the latter’s apartment Jan. 4.
Daughter Melany told MPD officers that Benjamin, 35, told her that their mother “was sleeping” and put a second man, who she does not know, on the phone. The Top’s surveillance footage found the driver of a Dodge Charger arriving there at 9:20 a.m. and was let in by B. Avrut. The driver left after 1:20p.m. in the Charger; B. Avrut in his mother’s car.
The Charger, its driver and B. Avrut were found later that Monday at the Newark-Irvington border. B. Avrut was found with G. Avrut’s cell phone, bruised hands and blood on his socks. The son, who has been charged with murder, was not mentioned in his mother’s obituary.
G. Avrut’s memorial donations may be made to the releaserecoveryfoundation.org. She had asked on her Dec.29 birthday FB posting that donations may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association.
MONTCLAIR – The township and Montclair Parking Utility have “indefinitely” postponed what would have been their Jan. 4 closing of the 83-space Midtown Parking Lot along Glenridge Avenue and North Willow Street.
By “indefinitely,” township elders and the MPU are postponing closing the lot until the two Seymour Street parking garages south and across the street from the Wellmont Theater are open. One of those garages was to be open as early as Jan. 6.
Once Iron State/Little Man Parking open their ostensibly private garages’ 434 overall spaces, Midtown’s 129 permit and 56 meter parkers will be advised to leave and make alternate plans. The lot is to be replaced by a $10 million, four-story, 314 space parking garage to be open in early 2022.
The to-be-built garage, approved by the Montclair Planning Board in 2018, is considered part of the Seymour Street Arts Center project. Many merchants along Bloomfield Avenue’s north side between Glenridge Avenue and North Willow Street, however, only learned of the Midtown lot behind them Jan. 4’s closure when signs were posted Dec. 30.
Those concerned merchants launched a Change.org petition Jan. 5 to keep the Midtown lot open until the other garages go online plus keeping alleyway and back dumpster areas accessible. That petition drew 1,218 signatures as of 4:30 p.m. Jan. 12.
The Midtown lot used to include a standalone Pit Stop Garage in the 1970s-80s. One “Local Talk” reporter used to buy weekly editions of “Autoweek” there in 1973. Pit Stop moved to 621 Bloomfield Ave., Bloomfield before its two-story brick garage was demolished.
BLOOMFIELD – The township’s public school district has postponed its hybrid learning launch, again, to at least after Feb. 23.
Bloomfield Superintendent of Schools Salvatore Goncalves, on Jan. 11, announced that he has waived off the intended Jan. 25 BPS hybrid launch and has been postponed indefinitely.
Goncalves, after constant discussion with local, county and state officials on the rise of COVID-19 infections, recently talked with the Bloomfield Board of Education before deciding to scratch Jan. 25.
This is the second time Bloomfield’s school super has put off mixed electronic/in-person instruction for the 2020-21 school year. Nov. 9 was the first launch date scrubbed.
“This’ a work in progress,” said Goncalves. “Although I’m unable to provide a revised reopening date at this time, I’ll be providing an update to the community at the Feb. board meeting.
GLEN RIDGE – Incumbent Tracey St. Auburn and newcomers Jocelyn Gottlieb and Duval Graham were sworn into the Glen Ridge Board of Education here Jan. 6.
St Auburn was appointed by her peers to head up the GRBOE Personnel and Policy Committee. Gottlieb was placed onto the Negotiations Committee and Graham the Finance and Facilities Committee.
The newly constituted board re-elected Elisabeth Ginsburg as its president and Michael De Leeuw and David Campbell first and second vice presidents.
BELLEVILLE – Family and friends of Domenico F. Chiarella, 85, paid their last respects to the longtime resident and tailor Jan. 10-11 in Bloomfield.
Chiarella died here at RWJBaranabasHealth Clara Maass Hospital Jan. 5. He was best known for Domenick’s Tailoring at Montclair’s 3 Park St. 1994-2017.
Chiarella, who was born July 1, 1935 in Lamezia Terme, Italy, is survived by wife Gloria, sons Alexander, Angel and Carlos, daughters Giovanna and Janine and 10 grandchildren, among others. He was buried Jan. 11 in Glendale Cemetery after a Jan. 10 funeral at the Zuasola Funeral Home.
Housing for 530 By Wawa?
The Township Council has withdrawn consideration of drawing in a mixed use residential zone on the currently known “Wawa property” from their Jan. 12 meeting agenda.
Belleville’s elders have apparently deferred such consideration until the Belleville Planning Board weighs in on CME Associates’ proposed revision to the 2013 Roche Diagnostic Redevelopment Plan Jan. 14. CME, of Howell, submitted their proposed revision to the BPB Jan. 3, where 8.83 acres of the 18.33-acre lot would be designated for up to seven mixed-use residential buildings for 280 to 530 overall dwelling units.
11 Franklin St. was zoned for mixed commercial use crowned by a hotel. While the board had approved a Wawa, an Extra Space Storage and, on Nov. 18, a drive-through Starbucks coffee shop, the hotel concept has apparently lost favor.
