by Walter Elliott
NEWARK – City police officers are looking for five suspects who have held up four gasoline stations at gunpoint July 11-16.
The first suspect was last seen running from the Route 21 Exxon at 1443-47 McCarter Hwy. onto Third Avenue and Broadway at 1:40 a.m. July 16.
The man first walked up to the station attendant and, a minute later, to the convenience store clerk inside. The suspect showed a handgun and demanded cash. He had left with an estimated $400.
Newark police detectives’ review of the station’s surveillance recordings found the suspect buying items there 6:30 p.m. July 15. He left in a maroon 2003-05 Buick Century that bore temporary license plates.
Detectives are also looking for “four black men who occupied a stolen white BMW” who held up three other stations overnight 11-12.
The quartet first hit the Uptown Exxon at 387 Springfield Ave., at 11:45 p.m. July 11, followed by the Gulf at 242 Elizabeth Ave. and the Exxon at 1 Elizabeth Ave. Each time, they left the car, showed their guns and demanded money.
NPD officers found the BMW, abandoned, along Morris Avenue later that morning. Detectives believe that the foursome were also responsible for armed robberies of individuals across all five wards that overnight.
IRVINGTON – Three of the township’s bravest were taken to RWJBarnabas’ bun unit in Livingston as the result of a two-alarm house fire here July 19.
The first IFD units who responded to a fire call at 5:30 p.m. Sunday found the 2.5 story house at 5 Lafayette Pl.’s second floor ablaze. The incident commander called the second alarm when the flames began to reach the adjacent houses.
Firefighters, upon entry, found the house unoccupied. The three uniform people who were taken to St. Barnabas Burn Unit were treated and released overnight.
The fire remains under IFD investigation.
EAST ORANGE – County Sheriff Armando Fontoura’s Crime Stoppers has posted an up to $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person who shot an off-duty juvenile jail officer from East Orange in Newark late July 3.
Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II said that Laquan T. Nowlin, 32, of East Orange, was found fatally shot in his car while parked at Newark’s Sanford and Lanark avenues before 11:50 p.m. that Friday.
Witnesses told city and county detectives that they saw “a dark colored” car pull up alongside Nowlin’s. Its passenger got out, shot Nowlin, got back in and sped south on Sanford.
Stephens and Fontoura said that Nowlin was off duty from the Essex County Youth Detention Center in Newark. They said they have no connection between Nowlin’s employment and his being shot.
Nowlin’s funeral or memorial arrangements have not been announced as of Noon July 22.
ORANGE – Orange Police Department Street Crimes, Gangs & Narcotics Task Force members served search warrants on a driving school here July 14 – and came away with what they said were materials better suited for illegal gambling.
OPD Detective Lt. Kevin Mooney said they served warrants on Hi-Tech Driving School’s office at 122 S. Center St. earlier that Tuesday after a long investigation.
“Operation Hitech Driving School” culminated when a plainclothes OPD officer “conducted purchase of illegal lottery tickets at that location.”
OPD’s probe had determined that the office “was a point of service for ‘Poule,’ a numbers game associated with the Dominican lottery.” Police, on gaining entry July 14 found “alcohol, card games and dominoes games” present.
Officers also arrested Kevin Martinezgil and Jean Raymond. The duo, whose residences and ages were not disclosed as on Noon July 22, were charged in Orange Municipal Court each on promoting gambling, maintaining a gambling resort, possessing a gambling device, possession of gambling records and conspiracy thereof.
Hi-Tech, at the corner of South Center and Parrow streets, had been a driving school since 2005. The 122 S. Center building once housed the Orange Key Club in the 1960s and 70s.
The task force had served warrants and seized illegal lottery materials at five city addresses Feb. 12.
WEST ORANGE – The driver at the center of the June 6, 2019 rollover that killed Christopher “C.J.” Morgan and injured 19 other cadets and two trainers have been sentenced July 21 to three years in a military prison.
A military judge in Georgia’s Stewart-Hunter Air Force Base Tuesday has further ruled that U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Ladonies P. Strong’s rank be demoted to private E-1. She will also receive a misconduct discharge upon the finish of her military confinement.
Strong was found by a court-martial jury of eight Army officers and soldiers guilty of negligent homicide and obstructing the authorized seizure of materials. The panel acquitted her of involuntary manslaughter, reckless operation of a vehicle and two counts of dereliction of duty.
Strong was driving a 2.5-ton medium tactical cargo vehicle that carried Morgan, 19 other cadets and two trainers in Camp Natural Bridge – about eight miles outside of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.
Strong was taking them out for a field navigation orienteering class June 6, 2019. It is not clear in public records whether the Army 3rd Infantry member was among the injured.
The rollover killed Morgan, 22, at the scene. The West Orange Class of 2017 graduate was a star wrestler for the Mountaineers here and the Army Golden Knights. Morgan, who would have graduated with the Class of 2020, was studying law at West Point.
Several WOHS students, including Morgan’s younger brother, have been accepted by the USMA. There is also a scholarship here in his name.
The USMA-West Point Class of 2020, at their commencement ceremony last month, placed Morgan’s portrait on an empty folding chair among them.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The South Orange-Maplewood School District will soon have former New Jersey Supreme Court Associate Justice John E. Wallace on their property as a school integration monitor.
Wallace is to consider recommendations from Temple University education professor Dr. Edward Fergus. Fergus, hired by SOMSD as a consultant, has been on premises since 2018.
Wallace’s new job and Fergus’ new role are two conditions SOMSD had agreed to July 16 in exchange for the SOMA Black Parents Workshop dropping their three-year-old racial discrimination lawsuit.
SOMA-BPW, in its Nov. 15, 2017 complaint, claimed that the two-town district was failing to meet integration goals as set forth in a 2014 consent decree with the State Department of Education Office of Civil Rights.
The BPW, among its charges, said that SOMSD has practiced de facto segregation among its five elementary schools. Four schools’ student bodies are predominantly Caucasian while the fifth is predominantly African American – in an 11-school district that is 55 percent White and 27 percent Black.
The parents’ group had further asserted that SOMSD tended to place non-white and special needs students onto less academically challenging classes and courses. This levelling and tracking have led to fewer non-whites taking advance placement courses and tests, aggravating the district’s persistent “achievement gap.”
MONTCLAIR – Those who have an interest on whether the township should build dedicated bicycle lanes may want to see if its public hearing will join the Montclair Planning Board’s July 27 agenda.
MPB members Carol Loughman and Daniel Gilman presented a report to their colleagues here July 13 recommending the said hearing. The session would involve changing the language of Montclair’s Comprehensive SAFE Streets Implementation plan.
One passage would be where homeowners, businesses, houses of worship and non-profits would be notified of any planned bike lane installation. There must be 70-percent or greater agreement among those affected for the lane to be built.
Loughman, a former independent Township Council candidate, said the report made her more willing to consider dedicated bike lanes. It is too early whether Montclair’s dedicated lanes would resemble more like Newark or New York City’s lanes.
