by Walter Elliott
NEWARK – If a state superior court grand jury indicts you on four counts of vehicular homicide, as they have done with a Newark woman here March 26, the police will come to arrest and process you. One will stay in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility until when or if bail is posted, regardless of the burns you suffered in the fatal car crash that started the train of events to begin with.
Nashauna N. Johnson, 20, was held on four counts of “Reckless Death by Auto/Vehicular Homicide” until her 11 a.m. March 30 bail hearing release. Johnson is still recovering from burns, which covered 60 percent of her body from a June 11 Route 22 car crash. She also the sole survivor and driver of the accident that took the lives of her four passenger friends.
Essex County Prosecutor’s Office attorneys and Newark Police Division detectives said that Johnson was driving a Cadillac CTS which left the eastbound road and went into a right shoulder guardrail before Weequahic Park at 11:11 p.m. June 11. Taylor Hill and Kamal Johnson, both 19 of Newark, died at the scene.
First responders rushed N. Johnson, Nashaun Brooks, 20, of Irvington, and Asanti McNair, 18, of Newark, to local hospitals. N. Johnson and McNair had suffered third-degree burns.
Brooks, Irvington High School’s Class of 2019 Prom King, was on a Wagner College football scholarship, died by 11:57 a.m. June 10. McNair died from his injuries July 10.
Both Johnsons, Hill and McNair were students or recent graduates of Arts High School. Gov. Phil Murphy mentioned their accident in his June 11 Coronavirus Briefing because all five were heading home from a Point Pleasant Beach party that drew 1,000 people.
N. Johnson’s family, on March 27, wants to know how the ECPO arrived at the vehicular homicide charges. The family asserts that the car fire was caused when the guardrail cut open a fuel line while going through the CTS’ front bumper and past the chassis. An ECPO official, on March 30, said that the Cadillac was recorded as running at 93 mph before riding on and getting pierced by the guardrail.
IRVINGTON – “Irvington’s Bravest” spent the pre-dawn hours of Saturday March battling a three-alarm North Ward house fire.
Although IFD personnel brought the blaze at 46 Adams St. under control by dawn, they could not keep the fire from damaging four adjacent structures and destroying two cars. High wind gusts sent embers from the two-and-a-half story wood frame house flying next door and across the street.
The first responding IFD units found the fire engulfing the house at 3:25 a.m., prompting the incident commander to pull two more alarms. Although whether 46 Adams was vacant or occupied remains unclear as of press time, there were no injuries reported.
The fire’s heat melted the vinyl siding of 42, 48 and 50 Adams St. Mechanics were replacing siding at 42 Adams as of 10 a.m. March 31. One of the two burned cars and what is left of 46’s garage, remained on its driveway.
46 Adams, built in 1953, was boarded up. Two private fire investigators tacked on “Do Not Disturb” signs alongside a third on where to reroute mail.
EAST ORANGE – A respective visitation and funeral for former East Orange School District administrator Gail Smith, 65, of Montclair, has been set for 9 and 10 a.m. April 3 at Orange’s Woody’s Home for Services.
Smith, said daughter Bette March 26, had died after a 13-day battle against the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus. Smith served EOSD as an assistant to principals of the Ecole Touissiant Louverture and Mildred Barry Garvin elementary schools and as a Board of Education consultant on support services and parent relations 1999-2014.
Gail Annette Smith Brown was born in Montclair Sept. 25, 1955 and had graduated from Montclair High School in 1963. She had taken courses at Essex County College and ran her own My Private Collection gift basket and delivery service since 1980.
Smith found her calling as corporate and educational administrator, starting with Citibank N.A. Bank Card Membership, for 35 years. She was also information systems manager for with KMPG Peat Marwick. Smith, as of 2021, had been running her own travel consultancy since 2017.
Lucille Piggott and Sandra Mordecai remember Smith as living in their same apartment building in the 1980s. Piggott, OHS Class of 1975, is now Pennsylvania disability rights advocate Lucille Piggott-Prawl. Modecai was most recently West Orange Board of Education President.
B. Smith has established a Gofundme.com page for her mother’s funeral expenses.
ORANGE – One may want to consider the life of Arthur Hugo “Art” Gubitosa, 78, who died in Randolph March 26, on whether one can take an Orange native away but not take the Orange in the native away.
Art, who was born in 1942, brothers David and Dr. Louis and sister Margaret were raised by David Sr. and Flora (Hugo) Gubitosa at 375 Jackson St. The OHS Class of 1960 graduate and Tornados football player left for George Washington University for its undergraduate studies and its Colonials gridiron. The GWU Class of ’64 graduate was among the last of that university’s footballers. The lack of a home field and support facilities ended that NCAA Division I program in 1966.
Art came back to Orange to become an OHS physical, health and drivers education teacher. The charter teacher of OHSA’s current 1973 building was a one-time Tornados football head coach. He would meanwhile meet, date and marry another Orange native, the former Barbara Ann Sapio.
Some of Gubitosa’s students remember taking their practical drivers tests while running up and down South Orange Avenue. Others may remember his helping to chaperone a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters – until he stayed on the school bus, saying he was suffering from “Cloisterphobia.”
Art and Barbara moved out to Randolph in the 1980s where they became parishioners od St. Matthew the Apostle Church. He continued coaching several community youth teams there and, until recently, worked for GAB insurance adjusters in Parsippany.
Children Dana, Kelly, Brian and Laura and three granddaughters are also among Gubitosa’s survivors. His beloved Barbara, brother David and his parents predeceased him.
Gubitosa’s viewing was held at the Tuttle Funeral Home March 30, followed by a Funeral Mass at St. Matthew March 31. Memorial donations may be made to www.jdrf.com.
WEST ORANGE – Mayor Robert Parisi and Nicholas Macioci, Jr. recently came to the corner of Valley Road and Nutman Place to witness it being honorarily renamed Massi Way.
If “Nick Massi” does not ring a bell, then the bass guitar illustration on the new sign, erected March 5, should provide a clue.
“Nick Massi,” for the record, is the stage name of Nicholas Macioci, Sr., one of the original “Four Seasons” singers and musicians 1960-65. Macioci/Massi provided the bass guitar, his bass voice and vocal arrangements for Franki Valli, Tommy DeVito and Bob Gaudio – first as among “The Four Lovers” and, later, the Four Seasons in their 17 Billboard Top 40 hit record heyday.
Macioci, who was born in Newark Sept. 19, 1927 and grew up near Bloomfield venue and North 16th Street, moved onto Nutman Place in 1964. He and wife Margaret raised Nick, Bobby and Patty on the one-block Valley section street.
The two-story house included a recording studio for him and DeVita and, later, his own painting studio. It was here where the patriarch died from cancer complications Dec. 24, 2000. Mother Margaret, 90, still lives there.
Son Nick was a West Orange High School Cowboy scholar-athlete who was inducted into the West Orange Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001.
SOUTH ORANGE – The four candidates vying for the three Village Trustee seats on May 11’s election ballot may be subdivided between a team and an independent runner.
Sole incumbent Karen Hilton is running with South Orange Environmental Commission trustee Bill Haskins and SO Community Police Collaborative member Brayard “Bobby” Brown. Brown, an attorney and former NFL player, has run before; Haskins is making his maiden run.
While Hilton, Haskins and Brown are running together as “SO 2021,” Neil Chambers is running a “For Our Kids” solo campaign.
Chambers founded his own Chambers Design architectural, landscaping and environmental firm in 2014. He is looking for an expedited South Orange-Maplewood Public schools reopening.
Incumbent Trustees Steve Schnall and Walter Clarke have decided to to pursue re-election.
The Village Trustee race is “Local Talk News” only non-partisan municipal election scheduled for this year. By “nonpartisan,” candidates may run separately or together on a platform or banner without any reference to a political party.
MAPLEWOOD – A former township resident is back home after being released on $25,000 bail from the Wake County (N.C.) Detention Center in late February on condition that he makes this month’s pre-trial or plea hearing in Raleigh.
Alan F. Chorun, 53, had surrendered to Wake Forest authorities when he had learned of the rioting charges against him. The North Carolina Capitol Police Department has charged him for starting a June 19 riot in Raleigh that toppled two statues and a medallion, causing $100,000 worth of damage.
NCCPD have not said how they had tied Chorun to the Juneteenth / Black Lives Matter / George Floyd murder demonstration that turned into a riot on the Capitol grounds that night. Some of the several hundred protestors pulled down two Confederate soldier statues and tried to topple a 75-foot obelisk – all erected in 1892 – on Union Square.
One 25-foot-tall statue was hung by its neck from a nearby street corner traffic signal. The other statue was dragged to the old county courthouse steps. Gov. Roy Cooper, in a June 20 emergency executive order, had remaining Confederate statuary removed.
Chorun is listed on Young Vision Africa’s founder and president website as its president. YVA was created to help children and youth in Sierra Leone. His biographical entry includes his being a teacher at a Highland Park (N.J.)’s Trinity United Methodist Church and “actively attempts to reveal and deconstruct racial, environmental and institutional injustice.”
Chorun, who currently shares a Stanhope address with his father, had lived here along Garfield Place, near the South Orange and Newark borders. It is not immediately known whether he had enrolled in the South Orange-Maplewood School District. He had had four other New Jersey and California addresses.
BLOOMFIELD – Outgoing Township Administrator Matthew U. Watkins has cleaned out his desk March 31, and Anthony DeZenzo has at least temporarily taken over his Municipal Building office. April 1.
Watkins, after five-and-a-half years as Bloomfield’s business administrator, had put in his retirement papers Feb. 2. The Bloomfield resident ends his 35 years in public service. The Rutgers-Newark public administration graduate and lecturer had held similar posts in Clifton, South Brunswick, Delran and, for a year, Local Government Services Director in the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs.
DeZenzo was appointed acting BA by Mayor Michael Venezia and the Township Council March 25. He has previously supervised the Bloomfield Parking Utility and the township’s shared services agreements with its neighbors.
It is not known whether DeZenzo will be considered by Venezia and the council as a candidate as Watkins’ ultimate successor. He currently stands as the seventh Bloomfield TA since 2001, going back to when now-Nutley Mayor Mauro Tucci, Sr. was BA.
Then-Mayor Raymond McCarthy succeeded Tucci with Yoshi Menale, who lasted 17 months before his July 1, 2014 resignation. McCarthy himself and, under Mayor Venezia, Police Director Samuel DeMaio, served as interim BAs before Watkins’ hiring.
The TA, who applies governmental policies to daily municipal businesses, serves at the pleasure of the mayor with the advice and consent of the council.
MONTCLAIR – That Jordan Tassy’s funeral arrangements have not yet been formalized by March 31 have not kept various Montclair residents from honoring one of their own on Instagram since March 27.
Tassy, 22, had lost his two week battle with COVID at Mountainside Hospital that Thursday morning.
The Montclair High School Class of 2016 graduate and lifelong South End resident had been running his own curbside-to-collection recycling collection service when COVID had sidelined the township’s own collectors earlier this month.
“Living the mantra of John F. Kennedy, Jordan didn’t ask what his community can do for him,” said Councilman Peter Yacobellis March 27. “He stepped up and asked what he can do for the community. That’s who we lost and it’s heartbreaking.”
Tassy was the leader of neighborhood friends called “The Wolfpack,” whose adventures included flying drones, creating digital art and 3D printing. He started JPolo Films to produce videos and photography.
Mother Norma Tassy said that the Gofundme.com proceeds, meant for his medical expenses, will alo be put to his to-be-announced funeral. His memorial service will most likely be at the Montclair Universal Universalist Church, where he was a member.
BELLEVILLE – A township man was among five others who are accused of running an interstate fentanyl and heroin distribution ring that federal agents had recently shut down.
Hugo Richard Villanueva Torres, 29, said U.S. Southern District of New York Attorney Audrey Strauss, was among three men – two from Harrison and one from Kearny – arrested and arraigned in Newark the week prior to her March 10 announcement. The fifth man was arrested and arraigned in Riverside, Calif.
All five were arrested after a federal grand jury indicted them for sending the said narcotics over the U.S. mail May 2020 – February 2021. The investigation was launched when USPS postal investigators found a 6 kg. package of the drugs in transit.
Using USPS to transport over 400 grams of fentanyl and 1 kg of heroin, if the defendants are found guilty, may spend between 10 years and life in prison.
NUTLEY – The Nutley Volunteer Emergency Rescue Squad, an independent nonprofit institution since 1953, became the Nutley Fire Department’s Emergency Services Division April 1.
Those who call for an ambulance here will see little, if any, substantial changes. Most of the same volunteer and paid help will continue to respond from 119 Chestnut St.
NVERS’ assets are now township property. Its staff are answering to the NFD – and not to the dissolved squad’s board of directors. Nutley, until it finds a third party, is paying bills and issuing invoices.
The above is what the township commissioners had in mind when they adopted their changeover Resolution 66-21 at their March 16 meeting. The resolution, sponsored by Public Safety Commissioner Alphonse “Al” Petracco, at State Department of Community Services’ recommendation, replaces last summer’s dissolution ordinance that Petracco tabled.
Petracco tabled his ordinance Aug. 17 when NVERS leadership turned over its financial records and fired then-president Jonathan Arredondo. Arredondo was accused of misappropriating and embezzling $105,000 from NVERS accounts for two years; his trial is pending.
Orange police officer Boris Dropic, who became NVERS’ last acting president since Jan. 1, remains an NFDESD volunteer.
“It’s very important that we remember the Squad (NVERS) and all the wonderful good deeds they’ve done for the people of Nutley; it was the premier squad in the state for a long time” said Petracco March 25. “It’s very unfortunate what went on up there. I thank all the volunteers and per diems who are here and all the former members.”
