Town Watch
NEWARK – The former dean of students at a high school here may or may not put in an entrapment defense when he is scheduled to make a plea in State Superior Court-Jersey City on Oct. 24.
Didier Jean-Baptiste, 54, of Jersey City, faces charges of second-degree attempted luring and third-degree attempted endangering the welfare of a minor after being arrested at his apartment by Harrison police and Hudson County Sheriff’s officers Oct. 6. The charges stem from an exchange of a man, posing as a 14-year-old boy, on a Harrison street, as recorded on the latter’s cell phone Oct. 4.
The man, who later revealed himself as “Hunter XK” of “New Jersey Predator Intervention,” gave the Harrison police officers he had met at that town’s Hamilton Street Speedway station some 10 minutes earlier that Tuesday night the recording plus the license plate number of the latter’s Volkswagen Golf he had driven away in. That recording was, in turn, given to the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit.
“Hunter” posted the 16 min., 38 sec. recording of his encounter with “JD” on NJPI and YouTube. Six pages of his Messenger social media exchange with “JD” was also published by RLSMedia.com. The latter exchange included “JD” posting his headshot.
Jean-Baptiste, St. Benedict’s Class of 1986, was fired from his post as Dean of Seniors and College Placement by the prep school Oct. 5 as soon as they were advised by HCPO detectives. The “adult lay leader of the community,” said St. Benedict’s Facebook posting that Wednesday, “of inappropriate conduct off of school property.”
The school and Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez that the alleged encounter did not involve any present or past member of St. Benedict’s student body. Jean-Baptiste, after processing, was released on a summons.
IRVINGTON – Police detectives here and in Newark are determining whether the three teens who were arrested by Paterson police there Oct. 5 were the ones who committed a series of armed robberies in either or both of their jurisdictions.
A spokesman for Irvington Public Safety Director Tracy Bowers said that PPD personnel called the township’s police headquarters Oct. 6, saying that they found a white 2021 Toyota Highlander, reported as being stolen from Irvington earlier this month, in their city.
Paterson officers added that they had arrested three teenage boys who were occupying the SUV and that they were remanded to Passaic County’s juvenile detention center there.
The Toyota Highlander had been present in a string of Oct. 5-6 stickups in Irvington. Its three gun-wielding occupants may have also carjacked a Range Rover near Nesbit Terrace.
NPD had reported that three males and the Toyota with NJ license plates R22-PRP had pulled into the Millennium gas station at 108 Bloomfield Ave. at 12:30 a.m. Oct. 5. They announced a robbery and beat the station attendant before fleeing. City police called for local EMS to treat the employee’s non-life-threatening injuries.
This is a developing story under investigation.
EAST ORANGE – City residents and community activists are not waiting for Letrell Elijah Duncan’s slated Oct. 15 formal funeral to mourn – and to call for action.
A “Local Talk” estimated group of 85 gathered around 186 Lincoln St. Oct. 10 where Duncan, 16, an East Orange Campus High School scholar-athlete, lay dying after being shot just after school dismissal Oct. 3. It was a vigil formed in part by the People’s Organization for Progress and the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition. (Duncan was rushed to Newark’s University Hospital, where he was declared dead at 3:45.)
Although the daylight vigil was smaller than the “several hundred” people who gathered at Rowley Park Oct. 6, it drew members of Duncan’s family and several elected officials. Many of the speakers pleaded to area youth to “stop being so hard on each other” and for the at-large shooter to “do the right thing – turn yourself in and repent.”
“Why should they have a gun to shoot another teenager?” asked a tearful grandmother Pamela Courten, “Letrell’s job was to bury me. The worst thing I did last week was to pick out a coffin for him.”
“I shouldn’t be here at a vigil for one of our own who had a bright life ahead of him,” said Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green. “I should be approaching our businesspeople, asking them to fund after school recreational and cultural activities.”
Essex County CrimeStoppers still posts a $10,000 reward for information leading to the suspect’s arrest. A GoFundMe.com page is still taking contributions for Duncan’s funeral arrangements.
ORANGE / BLOOMFIELD – It will not be long before one has to go to a Bloomfield Avenue front lawn to see the last remnant of Orange Elks Lodge No. 135.
Greater Essex Lodge No. 12 members re-erected Orange Elks’ bronze elk statue and its pedestal on their 296 Bloomfield Ave. lawn over the summer. The “Orange Elk,” was set 475 Main St in Orange from May 30, 1929, until it was removed in stages July 7 and 15, 2021.
Orange Elks members were invited to join the then-Newark-Bloomfield Lodge No. 12 in early 2021. What started out as Bloomfield Lodge No. 788 had opened its doors to their Newark brothers and sisters when they had moved away from their 828 Sanford Ave., location in 2002. The Bloomfield lodge also took Newark’s 21 number.
(Newark Elks Lodge No. 21 used to be on that city’s Green Street until it had built 1050 Broad St. in 1923. 1050 Broad became the Essex House in 1933 after a Depression-era foreclosure. 828 Sanford is now the Berean Seventh Day Adventist Church.)
While the Elks were putting up the statue last summer, Caravella Demolition took down the Orange Elks’ 1864 mansion and 1970s additions. The East Hanover contractor was hired by VA 475 LLC, of Brooklyn.
VA 475 had received approval from the Orange Planning Board July 12 to replace the lodge with a “multi-family building with commercial space” on the ground floor.
WEST ORANGE – Township firefighters, with mutual aid from Orange and other colleagues, put out a fire in the Gregory section here Oct. 7.
WOFD fire personnel, upon their arrival here at 280 Northfield Ave. at 3:44 p.m. Friday, found flames coming out from the 2.5-story single-family Tudor-style wood frame house’s gable attic window.
The incident commander called for “all hands” and mutual aid while simultaneously attacking the attic fire and ordering an occupant search.
The fire was contained to the attic. West Orange Police meanwhile detoured traffic, including buses on NJTransit’s No. 73 route from the immediate avenue.
Firefighters found no occupants. The 1930-built house had been posted on several real estate websites last month as being up for sale.
Units from Orange, among other mutual aiding departments, supplied coverage of WOFD stations.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – A recent experience in Columbia High School may serve as reminders that the COVID-19 pandemic is not over and to keep your facemasks handy.
CHS’s freshman class were mandated to wear facemasks Sept. 28-30. The Ninth Graders were then told that the school had gone back to mask optional in Oct. 3.
School Principal Frank Sanchez said, on Sept. 28, that “more than three individuals” had tested positive for the virus in the previous 14-day period. More than three positives in a fortnight, going by N.J. Department of Health and Human Services standards, qualifies as a COVID outbreak.
“We asked them to stay masked on the bus and indoors at school,” said Sanchez, “unless they are actively eating or drinking or taking a mask break.”
That three day mandate, said South Orange-Maplewood School District spokeswoman Anide Eustache Oct. 3, did not affect CHS’s 10th, 11th or 12 Grade students. Columbia is the high school shared by South Orange and Maplewood.
“At this point,” added Eustache, “no other school has experienced an outbreak warranting for our local health departments to mandate masking.”
GLEN RIDGE – Some quick thinking by church members and swift response by the Bloomfield Fire Department here Sept. 24 may have kept the parish from getting burned out for the second time in 131 years.
Rector Diana Wilcox and several Christ Episcopal Church of Bloomfield and Glen Ridge members said they first saw “a deep haze” and smelled “burning electrical wires” when they had opened 74 Park Ave. that Saturday morning. Wilcox dialed 911 after she and her members searched the electrical panels and light fixtures in vain.
Four BFD units responded and followed the haze and smell’s source to the church’s boiler room. Firefighters found a broken water pipe that would have fed the boiler, which had automatically kicked on during the cold overnight.
“The water pipe that cools the system had a leak and all the water had spilled out, causing the system to overheat,” said Wilcox. “Thankfully, it had a safety switch that shut the system down. There’s a lot of wood just above the boiler system so, had not the switch worked, it’s likely that our church would’ve been up in flames.”
Wilcox and church members were able to hold a scheduled funeral service for 30-year member Sheila P. Jackson. Jackson, 80, of Orange, died on Sept. 11.
Christ Church’s present 1832 building replaced one on Bloomfield’s Liberty Street that had burned down. When Glen Ridge had separated from Bloomfield in 1895, the new boundary bisected the property.
MONTCLAIR – Officials and parishioners here at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel is entering its first full season as an oratory.
The Archdiocese of Newark, in an agreement made with parish leadership made before Labor Day, has recast OLMC as an independent congregation and equal partner with the nearby Immaculate Conception Church. Both Our Lady and IC remain equal partners of the St. Teresa of Calcutta Parish which the late Archbishop John J. Myers had formed in 2016.
OLMC now has its own full-time rector, Fr. Giandomenico Flora, who is offering Masses Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 8:30 a.m., Saturday at 4:30 p.m. and Sunday at 11 a.m. The Naples-born Flora, who was appointed by Cardinal Joseph Tobin, is to have a to-be-announced installation service.
By “oratory,” OLMC’s parishioners will discuss the institution’s future with Rector Flora and the archdiocese. An oratory is a place of prayer run by priests who have not taken vows. A pastoral council will oversee Our Lady’s operations.
The Archdiocese has also granted $55,000 to complete church repairs and furnishings. $300,000 has been spent in the last five years for the replenishment and revamping.
OLMC members had voiced their concern that they would be absorbed – and not partnered – by IC in the newly-named parish. 94 Pine St. sanctuary and related buildings, they reasoned, would then be liquidated.
BELLEVILLE – A township resident has joined a Cedar Grove resident in taking the Shoprite of Belleville to Superior Court-Newark over two separate shopping cart mishaps three months apart.
Doris Stanzione, 61, has recently filed for personal injury damages over her July 12, 2020 incident at 726 Washington Ave.
Stanzione said that she was left “seriously and permanently injured” when her right arm and elbow was pierced “by a loose metal bar in the defendant’s supplied shopping cart.” She was loading groceries from the cart into her car in the supermarket’s parking lot.
Laura Cordasco, 66, of Cedar Grove, had filed a separate suit against Shoprite of Belleville over an Oct. 1, 2020 incident.
Cordasco said that she was pushing a cart towards the supermarket’s entrance when the cart’s automatic wheel locks suddenly applied itself. The devices usually lock up when equipped cars go beyond an invisible fence-like area in the parking lot.
The wheel’s seizing, she said, caused her to “violently thrown over and above the cart with her whole body.” She said she has been left severely injured and requires medical care.
The plaintiffs are asserting that Shoprite has failed to maintain the carts and keep the property free of hazards. The grocer has not immediately responded to a call for comment.
NUTLEY – A Change.org petition to have the late Nutley High School hockey team captain David Fierro inducted into the Nutley Hall of Fame, as of press time, is more than halfway to its 1,000 signature goal.
The 2003-founded Nutley Hall of Fame Committee’s judges selects Nutleyites who had “outstanding achievements at the state, national or international level regardless of their field of endeavor.” Prospective inductees must be born in Nutley, lived in the township for at least 10 years and/or have graduated from NHS. The Nutley Public Library-related group’s next induction is slated for November 2023.
Fierro, NHS Class of 2013, more than rejoined the team after a shoulder injury sidelined him for a year. The team captain scored a record-shattering 125 points in the 2012-13 season’s 25 games – 31 points more than the previous record holder.
That same season, Fierro was ranked 17th among the state’s top hockey players and a newspaper named him “Player of the Week.”
Fierro’s feat is more remarkable given that his township does not have a hockey rink. The then-Nutley Maroon Raiders’ home ice is at West Orange’s Codey Arena. The team, since Fierro’s time, have since added coed players from South Orange-Maplewood’s Columbia HS (in 2017) and from Bloomfield (in 2020).
David Thomas Fierro, 27, who was born in Paterson Oct. 2, 1994, had attended Rutgers golf turf management school and moved to Newton. He was Essex Fells Country Club assistant supervisor and greenskeeper when he died Oct. 1.
Parents Joseph and Mari-Jo, brother Joey, sisters Nicole Viaches and Vicki Vassas are among his survivors. His funeral was held Oct. 8 here at the S.W. Brown & Son Funeral Home before a private cremation. Memorial donations may be made to the Nutley Clifton Youth Ice Hockey Association, 190 Rutgers Place, Nutley 07110.
