by Walter Elliott
NEWARK – ECPO Homicide Task Force detectives are investigating the circumstances around a city man who was found shot dead along South Orange Avenue here April 6. It is the third gunfire report Newark Police Division officers had been probing in the West Ward’s Vailsburg section since April 4.
Newark Police Division and, later, ECPO Crime Scene Unit officers came to the 1000 block of South Orange Avenue at about 9 p.m. Monday – where they found the late Malik Fogler, 45.
Traffic, including CoachUSA’s No. 31 buses, were detoured around South Orange Avenue and Salem Street during authorities’ field investigation.
NPD officers first went to 83-87 St. Paul Ave. 8:35 p.m. Easter Sunday on reports of shots fired there.
Witnesses told detectives that they saw a person in “a champagne-colored” late model Pontiac Grand-Am “fired at unknown targets” and sped away. Shell casings were found and collected.
Officers also responded to ShotSpotter activity coming from 106 Oak St. that night. Shell casings were also found – but no description of the shooter.
There are no known links among the incidents as of April 7.
IRVINGTON – One of “Irvington’s Bravest” had reportedly suffered an injury while battling a two-alarm house fire near the Union border here April 5.
The first responding IFD units found heavy fire coming from 124-26 Mill Rd.’s second floor at 3:15 p.m. Monday. Some firefighters promptly evacuated the apartment building while others implemented a “surround and drown” tactic.
Irvington police soon closed Mill Road between Manor Drive and Union Place. Heavy smoke, however, wafted across the Garden State Parkway affecting traffic and earning airtime on “Total Traffic” reports by 4:20 p.m.
An IFD firefighter was meanwhile reported as injured, severity unknown, at 3:27 p.m.
“Local Talk” found residents airing out their salvaged clothes on 124-26’s front lawn and filling rolling luggage and shipping barrels with other possessions at 4 p.m. April 6. The fire’s heat had melted part of 120-22’s vinyl siding.
The six-tenant building, constructed in 1928, suffered partially collapsed second-story walls and roof.
EAST ORANGE – If you think that things have been quiet lately here at the Jewish Vocational Service of Metropolitan N.J. building at 111 Prospect St., you would be right – but not for long.
111 Prospect Holdings, LLC, of Lakewood and Passaic, has not yet set a date to demolish the three-story 75-year-old building and to replace it with a 323-residential unit building The East Orange Planning Board had approved 111 Prospect’s site plan application at their March 3 public hearing – which was expected to be memorialized at their April 7 meeting.
111 Prospect was approved for building the six-story structure on 101 and 111 Prospect. Ave. and on 34-38 Washington Terr. Part of those four lots, comprising 3.199 acres, is to be used for 360 parking spaces.
The holding company bought the four lots on Nov. 11, 2016, for $1.65 million. The sale reclassified the former church and charitable property as residential/commercial.
The sale also moved JVS of MetroWest to 7 Glenwood Ave. – closer to Brick Church railroad station. The 1897-founded organization moved here in 1948.
MetroWest’s nonsectarian employment and training services are also found in Montclair and Livingston.
ORANGE – The city’s police department is asking for the public’s help in finding a motorcycle stolen from a major intersection here March 28 – and clues to the rider who stole it.
The motorcycle’s owner said that another rider stole the 2020 grey Suzuki, license plate number V33-7W11, “at about 12:35 a.m.” that Sunday “in the area of Main Street and Scotland Road.”
Main Street bisects Scotland Road to its south and High Street to its north.
The OPD report does not say whether security video recordings from the PNC Bank, at its southeast corner, have been screened.
WEST ORANGE – The former Archdiocese of Newark priest who was once assigned to a parish here plus Seton Hall University now faces a third sexual abuse lawsuit.
Kevin Gugliotta, 59, according to documents filed April 2 in State Superior Court-Elizabeth, is accused of abusing a nine-year-old altar boy while both were at Scotch Plains’ St. Bartholomew’s parish in 2003. Another male, who has since died in October, had filed a similar suit against the former youth minister.
Gugliotta, according to archdiocese records, was at St. Bartholomew’s in 2006-14 after serving here at St. Joseph’s parish in 2004. SHU and Millburn’s St. Rose of Lima and Seton Hall were among his prior assignments.
Gugliotta was first accused in 2003 of abusing a boy scout while he was a leader of BSA Troop 38 in Newark’s St. Xavier’s parish in the 1980s. The archdiocese had that suit dismissed on grounds that he was a lay BSA officer and was not an ordained priest until 1996. He was temporarily removed during that investigation 2003-04.
The Vatican had Gugliotta defrocked Gugliotta in 2016 after he was arrested in Mt. Pocono, Pa. for having 20 child pornography files on his computer there. He had served part of a two-year prison sentence in 2017 and has had to since register as a sex offender.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Parents will have a second or last opportunity at the April 19 South Orange-Maplewood School District Board of Education meeting to comment on the proposed elimination of courtesy busing starting with the 2021-22 school year.
The SOMSD BOE members began talking about dropping the transportation program at their March 22 session as part of implementing their desegregation plan – which will start with Kindergarten students – Sept. 1.
The new integration plan, which the BOE approved in June 2020, would eliminate most courtesy bus service within the two-town district. Public school districts are not required to run school buses within 2.5 miles of an assigned school unless for specific conditions.
BOE member Susan Bergin, on March 22, said she and her policy committee are looking to “retain shuttle service between South Mountain School and the Annex and add service between Seth Boyden School and Columbia High School.” The proposed policy will allow “for transportation on hazardous routes, such as those that cross busy roads.”
BOE colleagues in Montclair, for example, are looking at revising their school bus service between South End students and Montclair High School. A group of that neighborhood’s students and parents successfully lobbied Montclair Public Schools and NJTransit to add direct Route 34M runs.
The new transportation plan is up for a second reading, and a possible vote, April 19.
BLOOMFIELD – Members of the township’s police department, including its honor guard and colleagues from adjacent departments, gave one of their own a final escort from Montclair’s Caggiano Memorial to Bloomfield Cemetery via North Caldwell’s Notre Dame Church April 1.
They were honoring retired BPD Detective Sgt. Thomas S. Fano, 51, who had died at his West Caldwell home March 28. Fano, who joined “Bloomfield’s Finest” in June 1991, retired in 2019 to work for the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office and in the private sector as a loss prevention/asset prevention administrator.
Tom Fano, who was born in Newark in 1969, came here by way of Montclair’s Immaculate Conception High School and the Essex County Police Department. The ICHS Class of 1987 graduate and Lions baseball team’s first baseman became a state corrections officer at East Jersey/Rahway before joining ECPD. Fano had moved to Bloomfield and joined the BPD long before the county sheriff’s office absorbed the county police in 1997.
Fano rose up the ranks from patrol division to criminal investigations and commanding the day shift. Remembered for a ready smile and a joke, Fano also earned a BA in sociology and criminal justice from Bloomfield College in 2005 and a MA in human resources training and planning from Seton Hall in 2010.
Post-BFD, Fano spent two years with ECPO as a special investigation and executive protection unit member. The now-West Caldwell resident and state licensed real estate agent protected assets at the Saddle Brook Walmart and as facilities director for Raritan’s Alternatives, Inc.
Wife Helen, sons Vincent and Michael, mother Anita Lombardi, brother Victor Fano and sister Maria Fano-Galeotafiore are among his survivors. Memorial donations may be made to the American Cancer Society.
MONTCLAIR – The Bellevue Theatre, on March 27, was vandalized for the second time in 15 months.
Representatives of theater owner Jesse Sayegh called the Montclair Police Department when they found an opened door on 268 Bellevue Ave. earlier that Friday. A joint search found that a person or persons sprayed graffiti throughout the building, causing an estimated $10,000 in damages.
Vandals last hit the Bellevue on Jan. 31, 2020, leaving behind some damaged theater seats, smashed interior windows, dislodged ceiling tiles and a discharged fire extinguisher. That person or persons remain(s) at large.
It meanwhile appears that the Bellevue, which BowTie Theaters closed Nov. 12, 2017, may not reopen in time for its 2022 centennial celebration.
Sayegh told “Broadway World” Jan. 9 that he now intends to renovate the building as a ground floor movie theater with apartment and storefront commercial space. He had terminated his lease Jan. 1 with Bellevue Enterprises/Highgate Hall LLC for “breach of contract.”
Bellevue/Highgate, where five of its six partners were Montclairions with motion picture experience, had proposed a six-screen theater, a second-floor restaurant and street-level storefront space. The pandemic froze those site plans, which they withdrew from the Montclair Zoning Board of Adjustment Jan. 5.
GLEN RIDGE – The Montclair Fire Department’s March 28 call to put out a fire near the former Benson Street Railroad station had some veteran firefighters and neighbors thinking back to a more serious blaze there.
MFD personnel and Montclair Police Off. Andrew Waring, according to township records, responded to a brush fire report from near the former station along what is now called the “Lower Boonton Line” right of way that Sunday. The quickly extinguished fire was traced to an “exploded” PSE&G pole transformer; what power outages that happened briefly affected immediate neighbors.
Neither MFD nor MPD records had pinpointed the brush fire, which was close to the 1887 station-turned private home. MFD personnel, however, joined their Glen Ridge and Bloomfield colleagues in putting out a July 10, 1990 blaze that seriously damaged the active station.
The fire was one of GRFD’s final calls. A shared service agreement with Montclair dissolved the borough’s department Jan. 1, 1991. Two 18-year-old men – one from Bloomfield, the other Montclair – and a 17-year-old Bloomfielder were charged with the arson Oct. 30-31.
The blaze created an impasse among the borough, NJTransit, right of way owner Conrail Shared Assets-Norfolk Southern and tenant Jimmy Wilson over who should pay for repairs until 2007. NJTransit meanwhile diverted all “LBL” passenger service onto the combined Montclair-Boonton Line Sept. 20-22, 2002.
NJTransit sold the building in 2009 to a resident redeveloper, who repaired and converted the station by 2013. NS has sold the 12-mile line to a third party, who is promoting its reuse as a greenway rail trail to towns along the way.
BELLEVILLE – One township man, accused of a Bloomfield armed robbery, has posted bail while his alleged accomplice remains held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility since their March 10 arrest.
Anthony Dagata, 21, remains held on a count each of robbery by the threat of bodily injury, possessing a weapon for an unlawful purpose and the unlawful possession of a weapon as of April 5. Ethan Lazado, 20, had presumably posted bail after being similarly charged.
Dagata and Lazado were picked up on Forest Hill Apartments property along Davey Street by Bloomfield police officers March 10. They were brought back to the Krauser’s Food Mart at 73 Belleville Ave., where the manager had identified them as holding him up at knifepoint.
The manager said that the pair had entered the store earlier in the day, “brandished a large knife” and demanded cash and several packs of Newport cigarettes. The pair then fled onto the garden apartment complex through the store’s back door.
61-73 Belleville Ave., also known as East West Plaza, was built about the same time as the Forest Hill Apartments. Both are within walking distance of Belleville’s SoHo section to its east.
NUTLEY – Township police detectives have been looking for a “customer” who ran out of a Franklin Avenue store with an expensive cell phone March 27.
The store employee was showing the customer/suspect the iPhone Prox Max’s features when the person suddenly shouted, “They’re towing my car!” The person then ran out the door, phone in hand, and north on Franklin.
The Pro Max is valued at $1,300.
