TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Last rites for Timothy Foster, perhaps better known as DJ Tim Dolla, were both traditional and musical. Foster’s July 25 10 a.m. visitation and Noon funeral here at the St. Paul Life Center plus burial at Evergreen Cemetery was followed by Brick Bandits-hosted celebration 5 p.m. – Midnight July 27 at Roselle’s Mister East club.
Foster, 39, said his family, had died here July 14. The May 24, 1983, North Plainfield native had moved to Newark to attend Arts High School and Essex County College. He latched onto the Jersey Club beat scene in the 2000s, becoming an innovative DJ and producer.
The Brick Bandits co-founder helped Jersey Club – hip-hop and R&B songs remixed to an energetic fast beat – gain a world following. As Mista Foster, he released remixes of Beyonce’s “Break My Soul” and Nigerian singer Tems’ “Higher” in June.
IRVINGTON – The ECPO Homicide and Major Crimes Task Force is continuing its investigation of Rasheed Mells’ July 16 death while the township resident’s relatives and friends have held his last rites on July 27-28.
The remains of Mells, 24, are to be laid to rest in Evergreen Cemetery after 11 a.m. July 29’s funeral service in Newark’s Perry Funeral Home. His visitation is to be held at Perry 6 p.m. July 28.
The prosecutor’s office had identified Mells, who was born June 30, 1998, as the man before a South 20th Street, Newark house sidewalk 6:07 p.m. July 16. The scene, along the 750 block of South 20th, is about a block east of the Irvington border.
Mells, who had a gunshot wound, was declared dead at the scene at 6:15 p.m.
Mells death by gunfire was the first of three responded to by Newark police and ECPO July 16-17. A South 10th Street grocery store owner – now identified as Rubel Rahdams Ramos – and a third man found shot dead in a parked car at Central Avenue and South 10th Street were also reported among seven shooting reports on city streets in those 25 hours.
Authorities have arrested a suspect in Ramos’ death (See BELLEVILLE entry.) Mells and the third fatal shooting victim’s investigations are continuing.
EAST ORANGE – The tenants of “The Castle,” an apartment building here at 75 Prospect St., have been rejoicing since July 19 over having one of their two elevators repaired.
A spokeswoman for Castle owner-operator Platinum Management said parts for the elevator had arrived on July 18 and were installed. That elevator was out of service for five weeks. Platinum, of Lakewood, said that supply chain delays had prevented the repairs.
Tenants told the East Orange city government and a local news station that they had two options to get their apartments while that elevator was out. The first was to climb up to 20 flights of stairs in the 10 story building. The other was to use the other, active elevator to the roof and walk across the roof to take the stairs down.
July 18 was also when the city’s elevator sub-code official began fining Platinum $2,000 daily until the broken elevator was fixed.
Platinum has been running the Brick Church neighborhood’s landmark since buying it from One Wall Management and CBRE Industrial Properties in May. The Castle, which opened in 1928, holds 44 mostly three- and four-bedroom apartments with an average 1,860-square-foot unit.
Tenants, however, are wondering if their troubles are not over. The Platinum spokeswoman told the television reporter July 18 that it is considering subdividing the apartments to 90 units. The representative added that “half of the tenants are delinquent on their rent.”
ORANGE – City elders have been mulling the idea of creating an Orange Parking Authority since the City Council introduced an ordinance that would create the new entity July 6.
The prospective OPA, as outlined in Ordinance 42-2022, will make the new entity responsible for building, maintaining, operating and enforcing metered parking rules both on-street and among the city’s seven metered municipal plazas.
“OPA,” continues R42-2022, would be governed by seven commissioners on one-to-five-year terms. Five commissioners would be appointed by the council and two by the mayor.
Parking meter enforcers, with Orange Police Department consent, would report to OPA. Permit fees, meter payments and fines would provide revenue to maintain and improve lot and meter infrastructure.
The seven-page 42-2022 cites greater parking enforcement for public safety as its goal. It appears, however, to be bare bones in function and outline. East Ward Councilman Kerry J. Coley said that the measure had been on the minds of Mayor Dwayne D. Warren’s administrators – who have not yet made a presentation to the council.
It is not known, for example, whether anyone in Orange City Hall had compared East Orange, South Orange, Newark and Bloomfield’s parking authorities. It is also not known whether an authority, which may have the power to issue its own construction bonds – or a self-liquidating parking utility, which Montclair has – have been compared.
R 42-2022 is scheduled for a public hearing and a second, final vote Aug. 3.
WEST ORANGE – Township police officers are looking for at least three people who fled after shooting an auto parts employee here July 25.
WOPD officers immediately arrived at the AutoZone store after receiving a shots fired call there at 1:30 p.m. Monday. They found one employee with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound plus several other employees and customers who became witnesses.
The witnesses said that late lunch-hour shopping there turned into “a verbal altercation” among “several customers and employees.” That dispute turned into a fight that ended when someone opened fire at an employee.
Township police are looking for the shooter and at least two other suspects who fled the store before their arrival – based on witnesses’ descriptions.
The AutoZone at 7 Main St. and its parking lot abuts the Orange-West Orange border. The building and parking lot covers the site of the Erie Railroad’s Orange Branch railroad station, a parsonage and a taxi dispatch office into the 1980s.
The suspects’ descriptions have not been posted as of press time.
SOUTH ORANGE – The village’s water utility has been asking its customers since July 22 to voluntarily limit discretionary water use.
“Our water system is currently operating at normal capacity but we’re seeing Capacity good but we’re seeing a steep increase in demand,” stated the South Orange Water Utility in its southorange.org posting Friday. “Drought conditions are causing low water levels. To avoid mandatory rationing, please limit lawn watering and other discretionary uses.”
SOWU customers are being asked to water their lawns on an odd/even day and street address system. Lawns may be watered on odd-numbered days at addresses whose address numbers end in an odd number – or even-numbered days at even-numbered addresses.
The utility is also asking lawn waterers to do so either early or late in the day “to minimize evaporation.”
The utility daily serves over 16,000 residents with 2.5 million gallons through 70 miles of mains and lines. Some 300,000 gal. is drawn from Well No. 17 here in Grove Park and the remainder drawn from New Jersey American Water’s Canoe Brook reservoirs and treatment plant in Millburn.
NJAW’s American Water Operations and Maintenance has been handling maintenance, billing and customer service, succeeding the East Orange Water Commission, since Jan. 1, 2017.
There has been no similar advisories from NJAW for its Maplewood and West Orange customers as of press time.
MAPLEWOOD – Township police officers assisted their Union Township colleagues in pursuing a reported stolen vehicle July 18 and in arresting the three suspects after they had crashed onto a Prospect Street house front lawn here.
UPD officers told their counterparts about a white BMW X5 that they had spotted at Springfield and Millburn Avenues that Monday afternoon and had attempted a motor vehicle stop. The intersection is where Maplewood’s College Hill and Union’s Vauxhall sections meet.
Union patrols were on alert for the BMW since one similar to it and its three male occupants were involved in another car’s 11:30 a.m. burglary along their Portland Road. The said X5 had also been reported as stolen from New York City.
UPD cruisers pursued the SUV east on Springfield Avenue into Maplewood and west / northeast on Prospect until the BMW lost control and almost plowed into a house’s front porch. The three males, all from Irvington, were apprehended after brief foot pursuits.
Michael Quinones, 18, plus the 17- and 18-year-old boys, were charged with receiving stolen property and resisting arrest. The 17-year-old was also charged with eluding police.
All three suspects were released, either on their own recognizance or to their parents, after receiving court appearance dates. No injuries were reported.
BLOOMFIELD / NUTLEY – The two Bloomfield magnet fishermen who pulled an artillery shell from the Nutley bank of the Passaic River July 16 have been pointing uphill into Father Glotzbach Park for its likely source.
Kevin Obiedzinski and Patrick Brown, on July 23, said that the shell may well have come from the U.S. Army’s Camp Nutley, which occupied the then-undeveloped Avondale park 1952-57.
Camp Nutley, according to the Nutley Historical Society, featured four 90mm. artillery guns facing east to protect the George Washington Bridge. The gun would have lobbed 24-to-30 lbs. shells up to a 30,000 ft. altitude at any approaching Soviet Union aircraft.
The camp had operated 24-7 by 100 members of the Army’s 98th AAA Gun Battalion, Battery A. It took up four acres of the future park in part for its barracks, mess hall, motor pool and Park Avenue guard post. The Army decommissioned Camp Nutley in 1957 after Nike missiles, deployed elsewhere, obsoleted the 90 mm guns.
Nutley’s chamber of commerce had complained to Township Commissioners in 1955 about the Army’s dumping of debris and material on the park. The Army also took its time demolishing its buildings. The former sandstone quarry and site of the 1930s bicycle and midget race car Nutley Velodrome eventually became the township’s park.
Obiedzinski and Brown, who had been locally magnet fishing on weekends for several years, called authorities about the shell once they had brought it ashore Saturday. Nutley and Belleville police, treating the shell as if were live, were among those who had cordoned off the area and the Essex County Sheriff’s Bomb Unit took it away for detonation.
While most of their other finds are sent to recyclers, the shell had been the most unusual since either their finding an 1851 Colt cap-and-ball pistol or a third party ATM.
MONTCLAIR – Friends and family of Adam Wade paid the actor and pioneering television game show host his last tribute here in a packed Caggiano Home for Funerals parlor here July 15. Wade, 87, said wife Jeree, had died at home here July 7 after a long bout with Parkinson’s.
Wade became network television’s first African American game show host when he was named to CBS’s “Musical Chairs” by producers Don Kirshner and Jerry Schnur. The 30-minute program ran June 16 – Oct. 31, 1975 before the network canceled it. Several of the 95 shows – including one featuring Irene Cara and The Spinners – still exist.
Wade was an accomplished artist before and after “Musical Chairs.” He recorded three Billboard magazine Top 10 charting singles – “Take Good Care of Her,” “The Writing on the Wall,” and “As if I Didn’t Know” – for Coed Records in 1960-61.
His stage and screen credits included portraying “Ole’ Mister” 2007-10 in “The Color Purple’s” Broadway production plus parts in “Shaft,” “Good Times,” “Claudine,” “Gordon’s War,” “The Jeffersons” and “The Dukes of Hazzard.”
Patrick Henry Wade, who was born in Pittsburgh March 17, 1935, went to Virginia State University on a basketball scholarship but returned to assist Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine research as a lab assistant for three years. He consulted with Dr. Salk on the Coed Record contract offer.
Wade and Jeree met in 1988 and moved to Upper Montclair in 1989. Both acted in and produced stage plays for Luna Stage, 12 Miles West, Trumpets Jazz Club, Westminster Arts Club and other local venues plus on cruise ships until last year.
Children Sheldon, Patrice L., Jamel and Michael; first wife Kay A. Wade and “many” grandchildren and great-grand-children” are also among his survivors.
BELLEVILLE – The body of Newark grocery store owner Rubel Rahdams Ramos is being sent for burial next to his father in the Dominican Republic – and his accused killed detained in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility – while you read this.
Friends and family of Ramos, 46, held his visitation July 24 at Kearny’s Thiele-Reid Funeral Home. Ramos was remembered for cooking and delivering free food for neighbors from his and wife Alicia’s R&A Supermarket at Newark’s 10th Street and 13th Avenue during the pandemic.
Ramos, who was born Feb. 10, 1976 in the D.R., met and married the former Alicia Mendez before emigrating here. They bought the corner market in Newark’s Fairmount Heights section in 2019.
Stepchildren Anisa, Ashley and Matthew; grandson Giovanni, mother Monica Antonia Gomez and sisters Yesenia Maribel Ramos and Yuslenia Ramona Ramos are among his survivors.
Acting county prosecutor Stephens II announced on July 22 that Quadree Richardson, 24, of Newark, had been arrested in Kearny. He is being held on murder and weapons charges.
Richardson is accused of spraying bullets from an AK-47 rifle while in a car passing the intersection before 3:55 p.m. July 17. One of those bullets struck Ramos in the head while he was preparing a customer’s food in the kitchen.
Initial accounts of the shooting had identified Ramos as Rabel Ramos-Gomez.
