NEWARK – Relatives of Newark Fire Capt. Carlos A. Rivera are planning his funeral arrangements while Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide/Major Crimes Task Force detectives are interviewing the man who was with him in the Park Avenue fire station Jan. 15.
A local EMS ambulance crew, responding to a 7 a.m. Saturday call from 269-71 Park Ave. It was at the home of Engine 15 and Ladder 7 where they found both Rivera and the former fireman “unconscious and unresponsive.”
The unidentified man was rushed to University Hospital, where he was eventually released from Jan. 17. Rivera, 49, of Sayreville, was declared dead at the scene.
Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II, who officially identified Rivera Monday, said that Rivera’s cause of death is pending the Regional Medical Examiner’s autopsy results.
Stephens added that neither man showed any signs of violence at the firehouse.
University Hospital patients and staff, in the form of 24 U.S. Army National Guard troops, will be getting federal help when you read this.
The 24 National Guardsmen and women, all doctors, were deployed to New Jersey’s Level One trauma hospital on Jan. 18 for a tour lasting until at least Feb. 1.
IRVINGTON – A township man has been spending the year-end holidays and winter in Hackensack’s Bergen County Jail since authorities had arrested him here Dec. 8.
Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said that Hackensack police and BCPO detectives arrested Terrell Williams, 46, and brought him back to answer to charges of child sexual assault.
Musella said that Hackensack police and BCPO’s Special Victims Unit were told, on Dec. 5 of the sexual assault of a minor. A subsequent investigation connected Williams to the crime.
Williams is being held on first-degree aggravated sexual assault, second-degree endangering the welfare of a child and third-degree counts of third-degree aggravated sexual contact and penetration without consent.
EAST ORANGE – East Orange General Hospital, on Jan. 12, changed its name for the second time in its 119 years.
EOGH, in a Noon Wednesday ribbon-cutting, became CareWell Health Center. Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green, Lt. Governor Sheila Y. Oliver (D-East Orange), and East Orange Hospital Acquisitions Group CEO Paige Dworak watched while new signage was draped over the old on the main building at 400 Central Ave. and its Medical Arts Building at 310 Central.
The medical center started out as the Homeopathic Hospital of Essex County at 129-135 Littleton Ave., Newark, in 1903. Its growth prompted a move to here, and related EOGH name change, in 1926.
Dworak said that renaming the institution CareWell was the result of several months’ market research of its former moniker. The institution remains “Essex County’s only independent community boutique hospital” and, at 870 workers, “East Orange’s largest private employer.”
The renaming also marks the Jan. 1 completion of EOHA’s purchase from Prospect Medical Holdings. The group, including Dworak, started its transfer from Los Angeles-based Sept. 26. Prospect had bought EOGH in 2016 and had invested $52 to $84 million in capital improvements into 2021.
It is not known whether CareWell will ask the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services to return its status from profit to non-profit. The state granted Prospect its desired for-profit status in 2018.
ORANGE – A funeral for a four-year-old North Ward girl was held in Newark Jan. 15 while the man accused of beating her to death remains held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility.
Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II and Orange Public Safety Director Todd Warren said city officers were called to a house on the 200 block of Wallace Street on an unresponsive child report Dec. 30.
They found an unresponsive Laniyah Bloodworth with bruises about her body. She was taken to Newark’s University Hospital – where she was pronounced dead at 4:23 p. m.
Jamel Welch, 21, of Orange, who was babysitting Bloodworth for his girlfriend and her mother, could not explain the bruising. Welch was first arrested for endangering the welfare of a child. First-degree murder was added Jan. 8 after the Regional Medical Examiner had ruled the girl’s death as a homicide.
A memorial for Bloodworth, who was born July 8, 2017, was held at 6 p.m. Saturday at Newark’s Zion Hill Baptist Church. There is a GoFundMe.com campaign for her funeral expenses.
WEST ORANGE – The West Orange Public Schools and one of its employee unions are a rank and file vote away from ratifying a new contract.
The WOPS Board of Education’s outgoing Negotiations Committee and the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 168, of West Caldwell, announced on Jan. 5 that they have a Memorandum of Agreement.
Both the school board and the union are scheduling respective ratification dates as of press time. Details about the MOA, including its salary guides, are to be announced post-ratification.
SOUTH ORANGE – James Mtume’s life song may be over as of Jan. 9, but his music and message live on. Mtume, who was to co-convene the Third National Black Political Convention in Newark April 28 – May 1, said son Faulu, died from cancer at home here six days after his 76th birthday.
Mtume is perhaps best known as an award-winning musical performer, songwriter and producer working with some of the legends of jazz, R&B and pop. He was an 18-year co-host of the “Open Line” and “The Week in Review” radio talk shows. He said he moved to the Newark-South Orange area because of the activism of Amiri Baraka, Sr., helped Kenneth Gibson’s successful mayoral campaign in 1970.
Mtume was born into jazz royalty in South Philadelphia Jan. 3, 1946. Jazz saxophonist Jimmy “Little Bird” Heath, who died in 2020 at 98, was his birth father. He was raised by pianist and percussionist James “Hen Gates” Forman, Sr. and Bertha Forman – the elder performing with Charlie “Bird” Parker.
James Heath or Forman, who interchangeably used either last name, adopted “Mtume,” Swahili for “Messenger,” while at Pasadena City (Calif.) College in the 1960s. The child pianist and conga drummer went to PCC on a swimming scholarship. It was there where he was introduced to Kwanzaa founder Dr. Maulana Karenga and joined his U.S. Organization, an African American nationalist cultural group.
Mtume turned to music as a profession, first working with uncle Albert Heath on “Kawaida” in 1969 and with Miles Davis 1971-75. He left “M.D. University” to develop his “sophistifunk” sound with his Mtume Umoja Ensemble. His instrumental playing can be heard on Roberta Flack and the late Donnie Hathaway’s “The Closer I Get to You” 1978 duet. His 1983 one million copy “Jucy Fruit” album’s title cut has been sampled by around 100 later artists.
Mtume joined Judge Bob Pinkett and the late Bob Slade in producing and hosting “Open Line” on WRKS and WBLS-FM and “Open Line Nation” on Sirius Channel 110 1995-2013. He left after Open Line was shortened and became a regular guest on Rutgers-Newark’s WRUN “All Politics Are Local” until he had to turn his energy towards fighting cancer.
Wife Kamili, son Richard Johnson, daughters Benin and Ife Mtume, Eshe King and Sandra Lee and six grandchildren are also among his survivors. Although the family is holding a private funeral, a public memorial will most likely be during the Third National Black Political Convention at NJIT. He was working on a memoir with Billy Hall.
MAPLEWOOD – The debate over whether a second grade teacher had pulled a hajib off a student’s head or had replaced the student’s sweatshirt hood has taken the first step towards a courtroom Jan. 6.
Attorney Robert L. Tarver, in that Thursday’s press conference, announced that he is preparing to file a civil suit in N.J. Superior Court-Newark on behalf of parents Joseph and Cassandra Wyatt and their daughter. against the South Orange-Maplewood School District and second-grade teacher Tamar Herman.
Tarver and the Wyatts assert that Herman had pulled back their daughter’s hajib while conducting class at the Seth Boyden Demonstration School Oct. 6. They are suing, for an unannounced figure, over “emotional distress, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life and other pain and suffering.”
James Davis III, SOMA Black Parents Workshop chairman, on Jan. 16, confirmed that the Wyatts and Tarver are intending to sue – but have not yet filed.
The ECPO and Maplewood Police Department have taken over the Oct. 6 investigation since Oct. 12. The investigation had been an internal SOMSD matter until Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor turned it over to the authorities.
SOMSD communications director Anide Bustache said that Herman, a 30-year teacher, has not been in Seth Boyden Since Oct. 6.
Herman and her attorney Samantha Harris, maintain on Jan. 6 that she had tried to move the girl’s hood up from her eyes but, when she realized she was not wearing her hajib, kept the hood on.”
BLOOMFIELD – “Bloomfield’s Bravest,” with help from their Belleville and Nutley colleagues, quenched a First Ward house fire here Jan. 4.
The crew of Engine 2 came from its Watsessing Avenue Station to an 18 Ella St. house that Tuesday night on an electrical basement fire report. They found “a fire burning in a wall” and pulled two more alarms.
BFD firefighters contained the blaze until units from Belleville and Nutley arrived on the scene to bring it under full control. No injuries were reported.
18 Ella St. is a 2.5 story wood-frame house built in 1906.
MONTCLAIR – The Montclair Board of Education has selected chosen their last mayoral appointee – Mfreke “Monk” Inyang – at the end of their Jan. 12 public remote meeting.
Inyang, who has two children in the Charles H. Bullock School, has also been that school’s PTA president and vice president and led its annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Education and Service.
The second-generation Nigerian-American, who grew up in Newark and co-founded the Brick City Alumni Group in 2009, moved here in 2019.
The board – after conducting interviews and two hours’ private deliberations – chose Inyang over fellow candidates Brian Fleischer, Richard Reynics and Aminah Toler. All four were recommended by Mayor Sean Spillar.
Inyang succeeds the late Dr. Alfred Davis, who died Dec. 2. His term, however, will only last until Jan. 1, 2023 – unless he runs in the Nov. 8 General Election. His seat and those of incumbent Board President Latifah Jannah and Vice President Priscilla Church will be on the Montclair Board of Education’s first November election ballot.
A majority of participating township voters Nov. 2 approved switching the school board from a seven-member mayor-appointed Type 1 panel to a nine-member voter-elected Type 2 panel.
Montclair will be holding a special election to add two school board seats on March 8. It is not known, as of press time, whether Fleisher, Reynics and Toler have filed petitions to run in that election on or before the Jan. 6 deadline.
GLEN RIDGE – Two Borough Council members – Rebecca Meyer and Deborah Mans – took new positions after their reorganization meeting here Jan. 5.
Newcomer Meyer was sworn onto the council panel along with incumbent Ann Marie Morrow that Wednesday night. Voters ratified Meyer and Morrow Nov. 2. Meyer succeeds Paul Liscovitz, who decided not to run for re-election.
Mans was selected by her five peers to become their council president for the year. She succeeds councilman and former mayor Peter Hughes.
BELLEVILLE – Township officers have been looking for two carjacked vehicles Jan. 5-13 and located a third stolen car here Jan. 10.
Police have put out an all-points bulletin on a vehicle that was carjacked from Washington Avenue and Joralemon Street at 9:50 a.m. Jan. 13. Its owner said that the suspect forced him out of the car before fleeing South on Washington.
The wanted car, last seen along Newark’s Heller Parkway, is a black late model Maserati with NJ license plate number A70-NYH.
BPD detectives are also investigating a carjacking at Bloomfield and Belmont avenues Jan. 6. There are no further details as of press time.
Township officers notified their Nutley colleagues of a 2019 Volkswagen found along Watchung Avenue Jan. 10. NPD said that the VW was stolen from along East Centre Street Jan. 1.
The car was discovered and recovered with damaged sustained from an interim crash. It was towed back to Nutley police.
Jan. 11 Closed Meeting Mystery
Part of Mayor Michael Melham and the Township Council’s Jan. 11 meeting agenda included an executive session with Belleville Public Schools’ Superintendent Richard Tomko and Business Administrator Matthew Paladino “to discuss contract negotiations.” Contents of an executive session are to be released to the public at a later time at the parties’ discretion.
NUTLEY – Those who knew the late Gianna Signorile, 21, here, in Maryland, New York City and Chicago are still left in wonder since her Dec. 20 death.
The first wonder is how Gianna Rita Signorile contracted a cancer that affects one in every five million people. The Nutley High School cheerleading captain and Class of 2019 graduate was taking pre-law courses at the University of Maryland and had made the Dean’s List when she began to have stomach problems, including vomiting.
A May 26, 2020 biopsy found that Signorile had State 4 fibrolamellar carcinoma. The disease targets people under 40 who have otherwise healthy livers. Signorile only suffered from asthma until then.
The second wonder is how Signorile kept up her spirit – and those of others – the last 21 months of her life. A 16-hour surgery at Chicago’s Rush University Hospital, for example, left her with tissue damage to her toes. She had learned to walk again at home in September 2020.
Signorile, the same month, transferred to Fordham University to continue pursuing law. She took five classes that semester while living in an off-campus apartment between continuing treatments.
Doctors, however, found that Signorile’s liver was failing in December 2020. She died at New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital 12:58 p.m. Dec. 20, 2021. Her remains were buried in North Arlington’s Holy Cross Cemetery after her Dec. 27 Funeral Mass here at Holy Family Church.
Parents John and Dawn and brother John Thomas are among her survivors. A GoFundMe.com page has been established to help with expenses.
