TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Three city teenagers, in a date to be announced, will return to a Mineola, N.Y. courthouse to give an account on an expensive and injurious April 23-24 in Greater Roslyn.
Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick J. Ryan, in an April 26 news conference, said that the 16-year-old-driver and two accompanying 17-year-olds went on a chase that caused $500,000 in vehicular damage and put three of his officers and two of his detectives in a local hospital.
Ryan said that one of his patrols noticed a blue 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLS 450, with three occupants aboard, 12:10 p.m. April 24 and ran a license plate check. That check identified the Benz as the one that was reported stolen out of Roslyn April 23.
The patrol officers, said Ryan, tried to stop the car – but the driver began pulling away. It rammed a second NCPD car before turning onto Northern Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway.
The Mercedes, who had suffered front end damage and lost a front tire, was stopped in Roslyn’s Flower Hill section after colliding with two more NCPD cars. A 9 mm. pistol and 15 rounds of ammunition were found in the stolen car.
Ryan, in a North Bellmore garage April 26, showed off the four damaged cars, two of which have been written off. The commissioner said that two of the five hospitalized officers may have suffered career-ending injuries.
All three teens were charged April 25 with second-degree grand larceny and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose plus third-degree unlawful weapon possession. The 16-year-old driver also faces five counts of second-degree assault and third-degree unlawful fleeing of a police officer with a motor vehicle. All three were later released to parental custody that Monday afternoon.
“They’re hired guns by gangs in Newark,” said an angry Ryan. “They’re loading them up, driving out here, committing crimes. They are reckless, they are dangerous, they are damaging our vehicles, they are hurting our cops.”
IRVINGTON – The love story between Tania Wydra, 64, and Daniel Cassidy, which was formed while they were here in Frank H. Morrell High School, had suddenly ended with Tania’s death in Vineland on March 26.
Tania Wydra, who was born in Irvington General Hospital Jan. 24, 1958, met Dan Cassidy while they were going through Irvington Public Schools. They briefly went their separate ways after graduating with the rest of the Irvington High School Class of 1976, only to reunite the next year.
Tania and Dan Cassidy married on June 24, 1978 before Dan joined the U.S. Coast Guard. The couple lived in several East Coast ports of call before settling in Vineland after Dan’s honorable discharge.
The high school art and photography student died suddenly at home. Her memorial service was held in Vineland’s DeMarco-Luisi Funeral Home April 2.
Dan, son Dan, Jr., and sister Luba Pimenidis are among Tania’s survivors. Son Alexander, twin brother Lubomyr and sister Vera predeceased her.
Memorial donations may go to Save the Children for Ukrainian Relief Fund.
EAST ORANGE – Last rites were held April 28 for Albert Prince while county homicide and fire investigators were seeking answers to his April 11 death by house fire.
The first East Orange Fire Department personnel who arrived at 51 Hawthorne Ave. 2:15 a.m. April 25 found flames at all sides of the 2.5-story wood frame house. The commander on scene pulled a second alarm. East Orange police then closed the intersection of Hawthorne and Winthrop Terrace.
Firefighters knocked back flames enough to access the 1925-built house. They found an “unidentified, unconscious and unresponsive man” inside and brought him out. The man, who would be identified by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office that Monday afternoon, was declared dead at the scene.
Firefighters would bring the blaze under control by 4 a.m. Prince, who was born Aug. 1, 1945, was listed as 51 Hawthorne’s owner and sole resident.
Prince, who was a musician, had his funeral here at Calvary Baptist Church before his interment at Newark’s Fairmount Cemetery. Wife Jeanne, sons Damon and Glenn, daughter Elyse, brother John, sisters Jean Webb, Doris Patrick and Maude Prince and five grandchildren are among his survivors.
ORANGE – The 120 residents of a North Ward garden apartment building may have settled in new lodging by now while city and county fire investigators seek the May 3 blaze’s cause.
The first Orange Fire Department units arrived at The Platinum at 431 Park Ave. 12:25 a.m. and found three top floor apartments engulfed in flames. The tour commander immediately ordered an evacuation, close Park Avenue between High Street and Mt. Vernon Avenue and pulled three additional alarms.
Although mutual aid from West Orange, East Orange, South Orange, Newark, Nutley, Millburn, Verona and Fairfield swiftly responded, it took until 6 a.m. to bring the fire under control. The 70-unit Platinum is among several garden apartment buildings that replaced Victorian era houses in the neighborhood in the 1960s.
Orange Masonic Temple (1887-2022)
The six-story Masonic Temple Building, after 135 years here at 235 Main St., may become a memory by press time. Masonic Lodge 11, who built the structure, merged with the Livingston Lodge in 1972.
A pair of contracted excavators have been tearing down the building’s Philadelphia pressed brick front with its claws since May 2. Westbound Main Street between Park Street and North/South Center streets is closed – as it had been since an April 19 fire devastated the building. The fire remains under investigation by city, county and state fire marshals.
WEST ORANGE – Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility may have received a township resident, accused of a March 15 fatal shooting in East Orange, when you read this.
ECPO spokeswoman Katherine Carter said that Darneill Thomas, 22, was arrested in Danville, Va. April 26. Thomas has been charged with two counts of attempted murder plus a count each of murder, conspiracy, unlawful possession of a weapon and possession thereof for an unlawful purpose.
Thomas is accused of shooting and killing Joshua Dessin, 19, of Orange, while he and two groups of people along East Orange’s Hilton Street at 10:31 p.m. March 15. Dessin, who was found shot there, died at Newark’s University Hospital at 11:22 p.m. Thomas shot Dessin in what witnesses were saying was a “friendly fire” incident against the other group.
Dessin’s funeral was held at East Orange’s Island Memorial Funeral Home April 1. The Oct. 6, 2003 Newark native was an East Orange STEM Academy 2018 graduate and attended East Orange Campus High School. Parents Jionas Dessin and Irilande Cioneas, sister Jennifer Resouls and brothers Daniel Resouls and Geraldson Cineas are among the karate black belt and aspiring musician’s survivors.
Pleasantdale School Bomb Threat
The students and faculty of the Kelly Elementary were taken across Pleasant Valley Way to West Orange High School’s auditorium for two hours while authorities searched for a bomb here April 29.
Interim WOPS Superintendent C. Lauren Schoen called in township police and the Essex County Sheriff’s Department’s Bomb Unit after receiving word from Kelly Elementary’s Main Office. Kelly officials said they had found a “Post-in note with ‘There is a bomb in here’ message on it” that morning.
SOUTH ORANGE – Village police chief Ernesto Morillo said that his detectives had added their chargers to those from Orange, Mount Olive, Roxbury and Randolph that are holding an East Orange man in the Morris County Jail since April 1.
Morillo said that his detectives had traced the license plate number of the Audi that was left behind on Turrell Drive just after 10:15 a.m. that Friday.
A resident said that the Audi had followed her as she parked her Buick on her driveway. A man got out, demanded the Buick’s keys and, when she hesitated, “placed a hand on his pants pocket and threatened to shoot her if she did not comply.
While the Audi was traced to a stolen car report in East Orange, other detectives used the Buick’s GM OnStar satellite navigation unit to cart its course to Mt. Olive’s Flanders section. SOPD then informed their MOPD colleagues.
Mt. Olive police, while finding the Buick abandoned at a Walgreens, were told of another carjacking on the lot in progress. They, Roxbury and Randolph followed that third vehicle’s path until it had crashed on Route 10.
SOPD added carjacking, receiving stolen property, unlawful possession of a weapon and possession thereof for an unlawful purpose onto Howard Parks, 53, of East Orange.
MAPLEWOOD – The township’s Quick Chek at Springfield Ave., for the second time in 20 days, was held up at gunpoint on April 29.
Maplewood Police Chief James DeVaul said that two men, wearing hooded sweatshirts and masks, entered the premises at about 3:30 a.m. that Friday One of them displayed a handgun and demanded that the clerk empty the cash register.
The men were last seen entering a dark-colored SUV – which then fled south on Boyden Avenue.
A pedestrian had fled with $100 worth of cigarette packs after he announced that he had a gun 12:10 a.m. April 11. Both robberies are being investigated.
BLOOMFIELD – The late 16-year Bloomfield Democratic Committee Chairman Peter S. Strumolo may have a special perch since April 11 to watch the upcoming June 7 party primary elections.
Strumolo, 75, died that Monday at the Morristown Medical Center 35 days short of what would have been his 76th birthday.
He was born May 15, 1946 and grew up in Newark and Belleville’s Silver Lake section. The Belleville High School Class of 1964 graduate went to the Miami Military Academy, where he played football and basketball.
Strumolo returned to Belleville to marry high school sweetheart Naomi Wydra in 1969 and joined the New Jersey Highway Authority. Peter and Naomi then moved to Bloomfield to raise Peter G, Christian and Stephen Strumolo.
Peter advanced from Garden State Parkway toll collector to its Superintendent of Maintenance. He retired to become Supervisor of Job Development in Essex County’s OneStop Employment Center.
Sister Marie Strumolo-Burke is Belleville Councilwoman for Silver Lake/the First Ward. Five grandchildren are also among his survivors.
A Funeral Mass was held in Verona’s Lady of the Lake Church, after a visitation at Bloomfield’s O’Boyle Funeral Home, April 18. His burial followed at Bloomfield’s Glendale Cemetery.
MONTCLAIR – Contractors for Bellevue Theatre owners Jesse and Doreen Sayegh are racing to have the movie house reopen on its May 22 grand opening centennial date – while adhering to requirements set by township elders.
The Montclair Planning Board approved a redevelopment plan April 11 that would keep the Tudor-styled building’s aesthetics while making it economically viable. The Sayeghs have kept the Bellevue closed since then tenant Bow-Tie Cinemas ran its last show on Nov. 12, 2017.
Bow-Tie took all of the motion picture equipment it could carry out of the Bellevue before its lease expired on Nov. 30. The Sayeghs had canceled another lease with a prospective local redevelopment team in 2021.
The redevelopment plan allows the Sayeghs to waive the four parking spaces per-theater seat requirement and have commercial retail uses on 260 Bellevue Ave.’s first floor — so long as the structure is at least half-movie theater.
Restaurants, cafes, retail stores, a health club, personal service offices or an educational play center are among the allowed street-level uses. Professional offices and apartment units are allowed above the first floor – but the 101-year-old building must stay at its three-story maximum height.
Some other zoning requirements are being relaxed through last October’s “An Area in Need of Redevelopment” designation given by the Township Council. The AINOR act includes a phased-in five-year Payment in Lieu of Taxes plan.
Father and daughter Sayegh are planning on a 400-seat, single-screen theater. Bow-Tie had 885 seats among four screens. The Bellevue had 975 seats, a pipe organ and a second-floor restaurant when it first opened in 1922.
BELLEVILLE – The Township Council, in a 4-3 split April 26, voted to reappoint the six Class IV Planning Board members who were first appointed by Mayor Michael Melham in 2019 and later.
Questions over whether the Township Council or the Mayor has the appointing authority, which had been broached several times since 2019, had prompted Planning Board Chairman Raymond Veniero to suspend the panel’s operations April 14 until the questions are answered.
The six resolutions were put on the agenda by Melham and Township Attorney Steven Martino. The mayor had maintained that he had the appointing authority based on a pre-1990 municipal code law. The problem is that Belleville’s township government switched from a commissioner format to a Township Manager-Council format that year – where the council has appointing authority.
The council, by the same 4-3 split vote, also introduced a bill that would “cure” the pre-and post- 1990 appointment disparity. It is set for a second reading, a public hearing and a final vote on May 24.
Melham, Deputy Mayor Naomy DePena, Councilman Thomas Graziano and Third Ward Councilman Vincent Cozzarrelli voted for the cure bill and each of the six reappointments. First Ward Councilwoman Marie Strumolo-Burke, Second Ward Steve Rovell and Fourth Ward Councilman John Notari dissented and tried to table the legislation.
It is too early to tell whether the Belleville Planning Board will be returning to work at its scheduled May 12 meeting. That session’s agenda had not been posted as of May 2.
There is also the question of whether the dozens of site plan applications approved by the panel over the last three years will cause stop-work orders or otherwise be put into doubt.
NUTLEY – The Nutley Board of Education intends to narrow the field of nine Superintendent of Schools candidates May 2-7 to a pair of finalists facing their May 23 final vote.
The winnowing will be done, according to an April 28 Nutley Public Schools update, through interviews with consultant Dr. Ronald Bolandi. The school board has authorized the former Montclair Interim Superintendent to conduct the interviews.
The nine were first sifted from 27 applicants on April 7. They included five school principals, 12 central office administrators and 10 candidates with some administrative and educational experience. Ten were NPS internal candidates.
Whoever gets NBOE’s final nod will succeed the outgoing Dr. Julie Glazer on or by June 30. Glazer had been Nutley’s school district super since 2016,
