TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Commuters and other motorists may have had their suspicions about three of this city’s roads as being among the state’s “10 Deadliest Highways” confirmed, thanks to the findings of an online survey.
Moneygeek.com released a report Oct. 28, and has been picked up by some local media in the last four weeks, over which parts of state, Interstate and federal roads in New Jersey have the worst fatalities per mile. The site used 2018-20 data from the U.S. National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration.
US Route 1, from its US Rt. 22 interchange to Elizabeth’s Garden Street, is considered by the survey as the state’s fourth worst stretch. It had 10 fatal accidents for 10 fatalities along its 4.1 miles. There were 2.4 fatalities per mile.
NJ Rt. 21/McCarter Highway between Fourth Avenue and Miller Street is the fifth worst. There were nine fatal accidents or 10 fatalities along its 2.9 miles. There were 3.1 fatalities per mile.
I-95/New Jersey Turnpike between Exit 14 in Newark and Elizabeth’s Exit 13, is the seventh worst stretch. Its 4.9 miles here saw seven fatal accidents for eight fatalities. There were 1.4 fatalities per mile.
The deadliest highway stretch on this survey is 3.9 miles of US 40 between Noah’s Road and West End Avenue between Atlantic City and Egg Harbor Township. Its 11 fatal accidents for 11 fatalities translate to 2.8 fatalities per mile.
Moneygeek, on a statewide survey, found 22.5 percent of the fatal accidents had DWI as a factor. Speeding accounted for 20.5 percent of fatal causes. Distracted driving was found in 19.6 percent of the statewide fatal crashes.
IRVINGTON – Township police detectives are looking for the driver of a car who injured two people in the heart of Irvington’s central business district Dec. 3.
IPD officers and local EMS technicians were called to the intersection of Springfield and Clinton avenues at 2 a.m. Saturday.
They found two pedestrians with injuries by the “Five Points” intersection. Medics rushed the victims to Newark’s University Hospital, where they were admitted in stable condition.
Witnesses told officers that a “light colored” Mercedes Benz struck the victims while crossing the street. The Mercedes did not stop. It is not known where local traffic was detoured during the IPD field investigation.
“Five Points” is where Springfield, Clinton, Maple and Union avenues intersect.
EAST ORANGE – The Lukoil gasoline station here at 100 Central Ave., after nine months of renovations, had reopened last month as a Phillips 66 station.
It was not clear last summer whether 100 Central Ave Associates, Oknar Fuel and their contractor would renovate or demolish the 1971 station. They were clearing out materials damaged by a March 3 fire when fumes from one of the underground tanks prompted the fire department and the East Orange School District to close the neighboring Dionne Warwick Institute April 5-6.
The station’s rebranding marks a local return of Phillips 66. The Houston, Texas company had stations in Orange and West Orange before pulling out of the Northeast market in the early 1970s.
Phillips and the midwestern brand Conoco merged in 2012. “The Fuel That Won the West,” however, never left its Bayway, Elizabeth refinery.
100 Central Ave., however, is the only Lukoil station among the eight in “Local Talk Land” to change brands. OAO Lukoil traces its name to its Moscow, Russia headquarters. The Newark Municipal Council, in protest of Russia’s Feb. 25 invasion of Ukraine, sought to suspend business licenses of the two Lukoils in that city.
A regional Lukoil franchise company had bought former local Mobil and Getty Oil stations 1998-2000. 100 Central had first opened as a Mobil station.
ORANGE – “Local Talk” has found that the COVID pandemic and its social distancing and/or isolation have allowed some milestones and transitions to pass under the radar. Such is the case with the late Orange Public Schools official Adekunlele O. James.
James, 64, of Irvington, had passed away on Dec. 21, 2020. No cause of death had been given in his obituary.
James – who was born into a family of 10 in his native Nigeria on July 29, 1956 – was more than a 25-year OPS employee He was a longtime School Business Administrator and Board of Education Secretary.
James had helped navigate the school board into its 2018-2020 transition from a mayor-appointed to a voter-elected panel. He had outlined the school district’s $100 million worth of infrastructural needs 2015-19. The official who served both the board and school superintendents during the early month of the COVID pandemic.
James’ Funeral Mass was held at Newark’s St. Mary’s Church Jan. 30, 2021. His burial at East Hanover’s Gate of Heaven Cemetery followed.
Jason Ballard has succeeded James as the district’s SBA/BS since July 2021.
WEST ORANGE – Last rites for D”Andry Winroy Hull, 24, has been set for 9 a.m., Dec. 10 at Bethlehem Judah Fellowship, 83 Galloping Hill Rd., Union, followed by burial at Orange’s part of Rosedale Cemetery.
Hull, West Orange High School Class of 2016 graduate and a Mounties football player, died in a traffic accident at New York City’s Broadway and Canal Street Nov. 28. He was a WO Police Athletic League football coach.
Hull and his older brother had just won a semipro league championship in Brooklyn for their Seminoles team. The brother was following D’Andre in another car.
Father Winroy G. Hull, also of West Orange, is also among his survivors The NYPD has not disclosed the crash’s cause.
Resident Confesses to Restaurant Robbery
WOPD detectives said that a township man had confessed on Nov. 29 that he had robbed a St. Marks Square eatery 12 days earlier. Det. Rakeem Bell said that Robert Klosky admitted that he had taken cash from the Subway restaurant at 32 Main St. before 9:26 a.m.
Nov. 17. Klosky confirmed the employee’s testimony that Klosky jumped the counter, demanded the register’s opening and fled with cash. Klosky has been charged with second-degree robbery and has been remanded to Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The South Orange Planning Board, going by public comments from village, Newark and Maplewood neighbors and residents here Dec. 5, will likely get more of the same commentary at their Jan. continuation of Seton Hall University’s proposed gym expansion.
SHU, since Oct. 3, wants approval of its plans to add 13,038 square feet to its Richie Regan Recreation and Athletic Complex. Neighbors from Newark’s adjacent Ivy Hill section, citing recent flooding, want village planners to withhold permission unless a hydrological and hydraulic study of the campus and neighborhood is added to the application and conducted.
The Ivy Hill Flood Report, which had brought Newark Municipal Council members to previous SOPB hearings, was accompanied Monday night by neighbors from South Orange’s Tuxedo Park section and Maplewood. Village resident Jessica Miller, for example, cited two eight-inch diameter pipes coming from the university’s 2013 parking garage for discharging stormwater runoff into Essex County’s Ivy Hill Park and resident’s streets and basements.
“I moved into this community for its progressive values,” said Miller. “A private institution built in a wealthy white-majority community dumping stormwater directly into a predominantly black community is environmental racism.”
“I’m here in support of my neighbors and Ivy Hill,” said Maplewoodian Jackie Wolff, “and the demand to address the environmental injustice impacting the community due to the manmade uphill development from Seton Hall.”
SHU student Shamika Augustin noted that she was raised in Ivy Hill and that “many students” live in Newark and South Orange. Student Government Association Jayde Dieu called adding a stormwater plan would be “environmentally just and equitable.”
BLOOMFIELD – Relatives of the former two-term councilwoman Pat Ritchings have asked that memorial donations may be made to the Osborne Association of Brooklyn.
Ritchings, 59, who was Third Ward Councilwoman 2003-08, had died here at home after a long battle against cancer Dec. 2. She was surrounded by husband Douglas Cannon, son Henry and daughters Grace and Audry.
Although Ritichings ran as a Democrat in 2002, she announced, “I’m not a politician” at her Jan. 1, 2003 inauguration. She, at 34, was the youngest Township Council member at the time. A majority of Third Ward voters re-elected her in 2005.
Pat – who was born March 5, 1963 in Point Pleasant – and Doug came to the Third Ward to raise a family and to be close to her Osborne Association job. She had joined the incarcerated reentry assistance non-profit in 1991 and was eventually promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer.
The Pace University graduate had previously worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the NYC Department of Correction. It was at her latter job as an analyst, where she uncovered a falsifying sick day scandal; she was commended by Mayor Ed Koch.
Pat declined running for a third council term in 2008 after she was diagnosed with cancer.
Memorial donations may be made to the Osborne Association, 809 Westchester Ave., Bronx, NY 10455 or www.osborneny.org.
GLEN RIDGE – Footage of a body camera worn by either a Glen Ridge, Bloomfield or Clifton police officer, which was released on Dec. 1, showed the end result of a police pursuit that had ended here by a South End intersection on Nov. 20.
The recording showed an overturned 2017 Mercedes E300 that had landed on a corner front lawn off Ridgewood Avenue and Washington Street Nov. 20. The crash had splintered the front lawn’s white picket fence.
Clifton Police Detective Lt. Robert Bracken said that some of his officers had pursued the Mercedes and its two occupants through Bloomfield after its driver had bolted from an Allwood section traffic stop earlier that Sunday.
Two CPD officers, said Bracken, had stopped the black E300 at a parking lot off Allwood Road and Clifton Avenue after noticing that its tinted windshield had at least one bullet hole. They were talking with the driver and the front seat passenger when the driver suddenly sped away, almost striking two CPD officers.
The E300’s flight ended when it struck another car and barrel rolled onto the corner lawn. GRPD officers had apprehended the passenger who authorities have only identified as a 48-year-old man from The Bronx, N.Y.
The driver, however, fled the scene and remains at large as of press time. Police have not posted the driver’s description.
MONTCLAIR – Relatives, friends and Montclair Fire Department colleagues may be sad this holiday season because it will be their first without Battalion Chief Kevin Berry.
They may take solace in that Berry’s decade-long battle with ALS – Lou Gehrig’s Disease – is over. Berry, 59, died on Oct. 26.
Berry joined “Montclair’s Bravest” in 1986 with the goal of attaining the rank of lieutenant. “Boo” advanced to captain and retired in 2013 as battalion chief. He considered his post-Sept. 11 work at Ground Zero as among his proudest firefighting moments.
It was at a post-retirement doctor’s visit where the Whippany resident was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis – a nerve degenerating disease that forced “Iron Horse” Gehrig to retire from the MLB New York Yankees in 1939. (The beloved baseball player died in 1941)
Berry – aided by wife Vicki, daughter Haylee and mother Sandra and other family members and colleagues – fought ALS with humor and dignity.
Brother Andrew Berry and sisters Robynne Kruse and Elizabeth Toscano are also among Berry’s survivors. James “Big Jim” Berry predeceased him.
A funeral at The Presbyterian Church of Montclair was held for Berry Oct. 30. Memorial donations may be made to Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Office of Development – ATTN: Matt Reals, 516 W. 168 St., 3rd Floor, NYC, NY 10032.
BELLEVILLE – Township police detectives are looking for two suspects who put a food delivery worker in the hospital after an armed robbery here in the Silver Lake section Nov. 27.
BPD officers, responding to an armed robbery call around 4 Lake St. that Sunday, found the delivery worker there at 8:27 p.m.
The victim said he was delivering Chinese food when a man approached him and put the barrel of a black handgun into his stomach. The suspect demanded money, pushed him to the ground and rifled his pockets.
One suspect had taken $60 cash and the food when a second suspect exited a nearby parked black BMW sedan. The second man struck the victim in the face.
The duo re-entered the BMW and went south on Lake Street. The victim was taken to RWJBarnabas Health Clara Maas Medical Center for treatment of his minor injuries and release.
The first suspect is described as “a black male wearing a black jacket and a face mask.” The second suspect’s description has not been given.
NUTLEY – Township police supervisors have put out a “Be On the Lookout” bulletin of the vehicle that had struck a pedestrian near the Belleville border here on Dec. 4.
Township police and medics converged at the intersection of Washington and Hancox avenues at 7:47 p.m. Sunday. The corner is best known for NJTransit’s Big Tree Garage.
They found the otherwise unidentified victim there as suffering “non-fatal injuries.” Medics treated that person at the scene. The victim said that a “silver sedan” did the striking and had sped on.
Traffic Stop Nets Weapons
A Nutley man remains in Kearny’s Hudson County Detention Center since being found with illegal weapons during a North Bergen traffic stop on Nov. 16.
Members of the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office Gang Task Force said that they met Mark Peralta, 27, during a stop at North Bergen’s Liberty Avenue and 41sr Street 7 p.m. that Thursday. They had first arrested Peralta for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and an open Jersey City warrant – but that was before they found two handguns and two high volume magazines in his car.
Peralta is also being held on two counts each of weapons possession, possession thereof for an unlawful purpose, possession of banned devices (the magazines), unlawful possession by a prior No Early Release Act felon and possession by a banned person.
