NEWARK – City and Essex County authorities have been asking the public, since July 9, if they have seen Fatim Wiingate or know his whereabouts.
Wingate, said Newark Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose, is wanted for questioning regarding the May 30 shooting of three men and a woman here at Willoughby Street and Forest Place.
Police who first responded to that South Ward corner, on calls of a shooting there, 9:10 p.m. found evidence – but no victims. RWJBarnabas’ Newark Beth Israel Medical Center and University Hospital officials later called field investigators that two victims each had meanwhile arrived at their emergency wards.
Ambrose had not said how Wingate is connected to the shooting. All four victims were treated and released.
IRVINGTON – Garden State Parkway motorists were taking to local streets here for 65 minutes to avoid a three-car crash that injured at least one driver and closed all northern lanes here early July 13.
State Police Troopers said they arrived in the area of Exit 144-North, Milepost 145.9, at 3:58 a.m. Monday – three minutes after being notified. They found themselves having to close all four lanes while extricating occupants of one vehicle. One driver was taken to a local hospital in unknown condition.
When troopers and other first responders reopened all lanes at 5:05 a.m., the traffic backlog had rolled back to Exit 141. Others not stuck in line took the Eastern Parkway and other adjacent streets to get to South Orange Avenue or Interstate 280.
EAST ORANGE / ORANGE – An East Orange man and former Orange resident, accused of shooting another man in front of Bayonne City Hall and police headquarters in early daylight July 5, has been detained in South Kearny’s Hudson County Correctional and Rehabilitation Center since his arrest later that Sunday.
Malachai F. Worsley, 27, said the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and being a person not to possess a weapon. Worsley may be further charged with eluding and resisting arrest.
Bayonne police officers, responding to shots fired along Avenue C between 27th and 28th streets, found a Newark man in front of City Hall at about 8:25 a.m. The 24-year-old victim, who was shot twice in his left torso, said a man in another car had pulled up, shot him and sped north on Avenue C.
While Bayonne police and fire personnel treated the victim and took him to the Jersey City Medical Center, BPD detectives got the suspect and his car doing the shooting and fleeing. The victim was a passenger in another car parked by City Hall. The suspect’s car was found by Jersey City police in their Greenville section.
A man later identified as Worsley was soon spotted by Bayonne and Jersey City patrols while he was attempting to return to his car at about 2:39 p.m. A four-block foot chase and apprehension ensued.
Worsley, while living in Orange, had pleaded guilty in 2016 to shooting two cars along Jersey City’s Rutgers Street on Oct. 4, 2014.
The Newark victim was listed as in stable condition July 5.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Although Frank Sanchez’s contract with the South Orange-Maplewood School District’s Board of Education reads that he is to start work “no later than Aug. 24,” Columbia High School’s latest principal has been on the job since July 6.
Sanchez, a second-generation Cuban-American from Elmwood Park, had been holding ZOOM conferences with CHS’s students and teachers throughout July, learning what is needed in the two-town school system’s flagship school. That includes how to bridge the district’s achievement gap and discipline disparities among the diverse student body, the status of its School Resource Officers and how to re-open CHS in the Coronavirus-ushered social distancing era.
Sanchez admits that he found the SOMSD community more diverse than his previous stints at Mountain Lakes and Springfield public schools. He left the Morris County district after 12 years when that board decided not to make him permanent Mountain Lakes High School principal. He started out as a teacher and administrator in nearby Springfield schools in 2006.
“They (CHS’ teachers) talked about how diverse the school is and how it is exciting for them (and) for students to have different perspectives,” said Sanchez. “It’s very rare in public schools.”
Students and teachers are at the core of Sanchez’s intentions. He wants the CHS student body to have a greater voice in decision making. He wants to hire the best teachers available “who care and to create an environment to celebrate excellence.”
Regarding SROs, Sanchez wants to see them become more like mentors and to establish restorative justice. While he said, “there shouldn’t be a wall with AP classes,” Sanchez believes that tracking students begins at junior high school, prompting him to start talking with the respective Maplewood and South Orange Middle School principals.
“Low expectations for students by faculty is still bigotry,” said Sanchez. “We want our faculty . . . to really be our cheerleader and promote that child to take that class that might be a stretch.”
MONTCLAIR – What started off as a June 29 dispute between Marion Road neighbors over some backyard work turned into a “Permit Karen” video that has gone viral and been nationally broadcasted.
“TMZ,” aired a cell phone video clip July 1 of “Susan” who was standing on the Upper Montclair residential street, telling neighbors that she had been harassed by her neighbors for two years while calling Montclair police that their neighbors had assaulted her.
Susan’s neighbors – Fareed Nassor and Norrindi Brown Hayat – were recording and had posted it on their Facebook page. The three-year residents said that they had Susan leave their backyard three times in 30 minutes. They said that she had kept asking if they had permits to install their backyard patio. Two Montclair construction officials were called over – who said the Hayats do not need a permit for such work.
Norridi Hayat called Susan, “Karen” in the video, triggering the “Permit Karen” label. There are some 1,500 video clips or memes since 2018 showing Caucasian females calling the authorities on usually African Americans who are legally engaged in some activity.
One example surfaced from Central Park May 25, where birdwatcher Christopher Cooper asked Amy Cooper (no known relation) to leash her dog in that area. A. Cooper responded not by leashing her dog, but, on C. Cooper’s video, called NYPD that she was being “assaulted by an African American. The video’s reaction included A. Cooper losing her job and, briefly, her dog.
MPD sent a patrol car to the block in what they called “a dispute that remains under investigation.” Some 40 neighbors held a block rally June 30 in support of the Hayats, who are lawyers. Former Fourth Ward Councilwoman Dr. Renee Baskerville has meanwhile called on the Township Council to increase penalties on false report filings.
BLOOMFIELD – Saturday afternoon business as usual was interrupted for at least a couple of hours July 11 after an SUV crashed into a Town Center storefront here at 1:20 p.m.
A preliminary investigation found that the driver of the silver four-door Toyota had lost control and backed into the front window of 549 Bloomfield Ave. The crash into the Civilized Nation clothing and shoe store grazed a curbside parking meter and had missed the GNC store to its west and a vacant former walk-in medical office front to its east.
Westbound traffic, including buses on five NJTransit routes, were rerouted onto Municipal Plaza and Franklin Avenue until a police-contracted flatbed tow truck extricated the SUV. Its driver suffered non-serious injuries.
GLEN RIDGE / NUTLEY – A township woman, who was exercising her right to peacefully assemble by Nutley’s Christopher Columbus monument June 26, may have found the hard way that her behavior there can cost her a job with a borough employer.
Hackensack Meridian Health, responding to photos and video footage of the Nutley for Black Lives and counter-demonstrators that Friday, stated that Valerie Pastore had lost her job at Mountainside Hospital June 30. Pastore, who has 24 years’ experience as a recruiter, was Mountainside’s director of physician hiring since January.
The photos and videos Twitter posters sent to Hackensack Meridian June 28 has Pastore among a group of people around the monument, yelling insults at the NFBL protestors. Some of the pictures appear to have her giving a Nazi “Seig Heil” salute at NFBL.
Hackensack Meridian, in its June 30 Twitter response, said that the person in the video is no longer its employee. The confrontation started on social media rumors that NFBL’s “Roll for Black Lives” march intended to vandalize or topple the Columbus monument.
UNICO Nutley Chapter President Lorraine Kucinski first passed along the rumors as that to her members June 24. Kuciniski, when told by Nutley police and NFBL that no intention to deface the monument, sent a June 25 e-mail to dissuade UNICO members from assembling there.
Several homeowners have since filed vandalism reports, saying that their “Black Lives Matter” lawn signage had been defaced June 27-28.
