TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Perhaps actors, like the late Ray Liotta, and the local Italian restaurant he had worked in for three summers, should be counted among Newark’s exports.
Liotta, 67, maybe best known for portraying Shoeless Joe Jackson in 1989’s “Field of Dreams” and mobster Henry Hill in 1990’s “Goodfellas,” had reportedly died in his sleep in his hotel room on May 26. He was in the Dominican Republic for the shooting of “Dangerous Waters.”
Liotta’s life arc began when he was born in Newark on Dec. 18, 1954. The months-old infant was adopted by Alfred and Mary Liotta from one of up to 11 orphanages Newark had in 1955. Which one was Ray adopted from remains within the Liotta family.
Ray’s youth was spent in Union while his parents ran a local auto parts store. The Union High School Class of 1972 graduate, however, spent his 1971-73 summers making pizzas at Pizza House-Pizza Chef, 111 North Union Ave., Cranford.
Vincent and Ronnie Preziosi had reopened Pizza House-Pizza Chef there in 1970 after running an Italian restaurant at 610 1/2 Springfield Ave., Newark from 1955 into 1964. Although their eatery had closed during the late 1960s, an Italian hot dog house had moved into that address from Downtown Newark around 2018.
Liotta and Vincent Preziosi moved to the University of Miami, the former to take acting classes. Ray had a taste after he got kicked off the Union High School basketball team and replaced that with a drama class. Liotta returned to New York to take up stage plays, launching 40 years of movie, television, theater and video game credits.
First wife Michelle Grace, daughter Karsen Liotta, sister Linda Liotta Matthews and fiancée Jacy Nittolo are among his survivors. Funeral services for the late Los Angeles resident have not been announced as of press time.
IRVINGTON – A Springfield Avenue Business District assistant store manager has an Irvington Municipal Court date next month to answer to a charge of aggravated assault of a customer from May 27.
IPD officers found the assistant manager and a customer, separated by customers, in front of the Dollar Tree here at 886 Springfield Ave. 7:09 p.m. Friday.
Witnesses said that the two began arguing in the beauty aids aisle when Alliah Vasquez, 29, of Irvington, grabbed the customer’s hair and neck. A witness’ cell 13-minute phone recording has her repeatedly punching the customer and wrestling themselves onto the main floor before the customers intervened.
The unidentified customer was treated for “a minor eye injury’ after being pepper-sprayed during the struggle. The man had put up his arms in surrender and had said, “I will not hit her.”
Attempted Bank Robbery
IPD officers had found, interviewed and arrested a township man whose description matched the one given by Investors Savings Bank employees of attempting to rob them at 11:29 a.m. May 27. Bank tellers said that Sherike Massey, 23, had handed them a note that he wanted $100,000 “indicated that he had a gun” but left empty-handed.
Police officers, who met up with Massey “a short distance away” from 1065 Stuyvesant Ave., could not find a weapon on him. Massey has since been held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Center on a count each of robbery by threat or fear of bodily injury and creating a false sense of impending disaster.
EAST ORANGE – Casual riders who take CoachUSA’s 24, 31 and 44 bus lines have been coughing up more change since the company’s June 1 fare increase.
The 24, 31 and 44 – which all traverse East Orange – now have a $1.80 one zone base fare. It is up a ni9ckel from its base fare set since June 6, 2019.
Two-zone travel is now $2.80 and three-zones are now $3.40. Transfers are 70 cents. Senior citizen/handicapped fares are 90 cents, $1.40 and $1.70 with transfers now 35 cents.
CoachUSA, neither from its Paramus regional headquarters nor from the Elizabeth garage where they keep the Orange-Newark-Elizabeth 24 and 44 and Newark Independent Bus Operation Authority’s 31 fleet, have given a reason for the hikes.
24, 31 and 44 drivers still honor NJTransit-issued Monthly bus passes and individual paper tickets. They may be “The Way to Go,” since NJTransit’s base one-zone intrastate bus fare is still $1.60.
The paper tickets, however, must not go through the Newark Light Rail POP stampers. NJTransit’s weekly and monthly rail passes with bus feeder fare zones will still not be honored.
ORANGE – A Funeral Mass was held for Orange Police Officer Rodolfo Diaz May 27 at Vernon’s St. Kateri Roman Catholic Church, followed by his burial at the Northern New Jersey Veterans Memorial Cemetery.
Diaz, 34, was among “Orange’s finest,” wearing Badge No. 372 for 14 months, when he suddenly died on May 19.
Diaz was born in The Bronx, N.Y. Oct. 1, 1987 and was raised there until he volunteered to become a U.S. Marine in 2011. He was based out of California’s Camp Pendleton and served in the Global War on Terror.
After his honorable discharge, Diaz took up police academy training and joined OPD March 29, 2021.
“Rudy” loved the MLB New York Yankees and became a Walkill Valley Little League coach. The Vernon resident’s passions included listening to salsa and old-school hip-hop music and dancing.
Wife Chloe, sons Chase and Beckham, parents Gerardo and Crucita, brother Ulises and sisters Lorena Peltier, Amanda Rodriguez are among his survivors.
WEST ORANGE – Trumpeter Rob Adams’ playing “Taps” while Suzanne Pennell scattered sand from Omaha Beach on the Municipal Building’s front steps gave the township’s 2002 Memorial Day Observance here on May 31 a unique and poignant highlight.
Pennell had her son, USN Lt. Dylan Pennell, collect sand from the site of the June 6, 1944 allied Normandy Invasion that turned the tide of World War Two’s European Theater. D. Pennell is a 2014 West Orange High School graduate.
Adams, of the Stone Soup Symphony, played taps on the late US Army Fourth Class Technician and WOHS Class of 1942 graduate Gordon J. Hansen.
Hansen, 20, who was part of the invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, was killed in action on March 20, 1945 when the building he was running communication wires in had exploded. The son of Hansen’s fiancé had brought the soldier’s medals and most of his effects to Township Historian Joseph Fagan last year.
While Hansen’s medals have been since on display in the town hall, the trumpet he had used while on the WOHS Marching Band had been long separated from his other returned effects. Fagan, on April 11, located the current owner in Harrisburg, Pa. – who then agreed to have the trumpet loaned for Monday morning’s observance.
Traffic, including local business persons and NJTransit’s Nos. 21, 71 and 73 buses, were detoured from Main Street between Northfield Avenue and Mt. Pleasant Avenue 9:30-11:30 a.m. Some local business people parked in the rear parking lot between Northfield and Veterans Plaza – a lot which had been named on Hansen’s honor on April 14.
SOUTH ORANGE – A Sicklerville man has been arrested for allegedly dispersing a Valley Street crowd with gunfire here on May 12. Three other men have been charged in relation to the altercation.
Veckins Paul, 27, has been remanded to the Essex County Correctional Center since turning himself in early that Thursday morning. He has been charged with simple assault, aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a weapon and possession thereof for an unlawful purpose.
Veckins is accused of breaking up a crowd by firing a handgun three times above their heads at about 1:30 a.m. Thai breakup came after two groups of Seton Hall University students had met for “a planned altercation.”
Three 9 mm. bullet shells were found at the dispersed scene.
SOPD has since increased patrols around Valley Street and the university’s neighborhood.
Paul Bruk, 19, of Mount Vernon, N.Y., Peter Opalka, 18, of Southbury, Conn., and Giovani Gelin, 18, of Brooklyn were each charged with disorderly conduct.
“The health and safety of our campus community and our neighbors in South Orange are paramount,” stated a SHU release. “We remain in communication with local law enforcement as this investigation continues. The University condemns violence of any kind and will take all necessary action to enforce appropriate disciplinary measures.”
MAPLEWOOD – Township police have been on the lookout for a purse-snatching suspect here since May 25.
Responding MPD officers met with a woman near the corner of Springfield Avenue and Princeton Street just after 10:58 a.m. that Wednesday.
The victim said that she was waiting at a bus stop on Springfield’s south side when a man pushed her to the ground, grabbed her purse and ran into a nearby parked car.
She said that she had $88 cash in the purse.
Police are looking for “a heavy-set man wearing black pants and short hair.” The suspect ran into a “dark-colored vehicle, perhaps a dark gray Honda Civic, that was last seen fleeing east on Springfield Avenue.”
BLOOMFIELD – A township car dealership group here is among three statewide who have agreed to partially suspend an overall $400,000 fine and comply with a New Jersey Office of the Attorney General’s two-year consent order.
Acting AG Matt Platkin, in his May 20 announcement, said that Lynnes Nissan City, Hyundai and Subaru will pay a $46,381 settlement with his office’s Division of Consumer Affairs. That payment includes $33,500 in civil penalties.
The fines come from what NJAG detectives said were “allegations that included charging customers for certain fees twice, accepting incomplete credit applications from prospective buyers and failing to list vehicle prices on sales documents.”
The consumer affairs division and Lynns have agreed to a six-point settlement which includes accurately disclosing sales prices on all documents, including a vehicle’s trade-in value and itemizing all aftermarket merchandise and dealer-installed options in sales documents and contracts.
Glen Motors, of Fair Lawn and the Bridgewater-headquartered Open Road Auto Group were also accused of similar allegations. Both have agreed to the consent order and financial settlement.
MONTCLAIR – The Montclair Board of Education’s latest additions, Phaedra Dunn and Melanie Dreysher, have been serving alongside their seven mayor-appointed colleagues since April 13.
Dunn and Dreysher, who ran as a team, were publicly elected to a pair of 21-month terms in a special March 8 election. That election is the first step in a three-year conversion of the board to a voter-elected panel.
Although Dunn and Dreysher were endorsed by Vote Montclair, the group’s founder, Erik D’Amato, was excluded from their inauguration. The duo and former MBOE member Sergio Gonzalez said they had disassociated themselves from the group since D’Amato’s March 14 opinion piece that was published in the “NJ Education Report.”
D’Amato’s editorial, entitled “This is How Montclair Mayor/NJEA President Sean Spillar Was Humiliated at the Ballot Box,” claimed that March 8 voters wanted to change in part from “self-defeating effects of education unions’ and union-dominated political machines.”
D’Amato added that there was “frustration in watching the advancement of energetic young teachers’ slowed down or their dismissal under ‘last in, first out’ rules.”
Dreysher and Dunn declared that D’Amato’s views are not theirs. D’Amato, on March 18, posted an apology. He said that his editorial “was not in the best interest of the group I had created and urged others to believe in, or the core issues it was built around – and those should’ve taken priority.”
Vote Montclair’s last Facebook posting, “Mission Accomplished,” was on March 10. Township voters are to choose candidates to fill three three-year MBOE seats in November.
BELLEVILLE – Authorities from the township police, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide Task Force and RWJBarnabas Clara Maass Medical Center have been investigating the circumstances of a patient’s fatal May 24 fall here.
BPD officers had responded to a 6:14 a.m. call from hospital security staff that Tuesday of a man having fallen from a third-story window. The man – so far identified as a 72-year-old – was found unresponsive on the ground and was declared dead at the scene.
Both police and security also noticed that a third-floor window had been broken Some 20 bedsheets and blankets, tied together, were found coming from that broken window’s opening.
“Clara Maass Medical Center is fully committed to providing a safe environment for our patients, visitors and staff,” a hospital spokeswoman declared later that day. “Per our policy, we’re unable to comment any further on active police investigations.”
NUTLEY – Mayor Mauro G. Tucci, in a peaceful transfer of power here May 17, turned over his office to fellow Commissioner Dr. Joseph P. Scarpelli in what would have been the middle of the former’s four-year term.
Tucci and Scarpelli have agreed to split the full term to two years each. This 50-50 split came from the special May 17, 2020 election results.
Participating township voters have Scarpelli and Tucci 4,586 votes each. Although each received 14.60 percent of the vote, they were tied. May 15 was a special election in that COVID restrictions prompted an all Vote-By-Mail process and a combined non-partisan municipal board of education election.
Nutley’s commissioners, like their Maplewood colleagues, name a mayor from among themselves.
Scarpelli, who has been Nutley’s public works commissioner, is embarking on his fourth term as mayor. Tucci returns to his parks and recreation commissioner’s seat.
