TOWN WATCH
St. Michael’s Medical Center spokesman Bruno Tedeschi sent the following statement regarding the status of its HVAC system and related state compliance at 8 a.m. Aug. 26:
“The hospital has been open all along and is fully operational. There are no issues with the state Department of Health. The hospital will replace the chiller unit that has malfunctioned; in the meantime, temporary chiller units have been connected are functioning properly.”
NEWARK – Street gun violence, as the Aug. 19 fatal shooting of a man and the wounding of a second on a Roseville street, is no respecter of rank or occasion.
City and ECPO detectives are looking for the shooter of Nadir Key, 29, of Newark, who was left on the 200 block of Roseville Ave. 11:29 p.m. that Friday with a fatal gunshot wound. The suspect is also wanted for shooting the son of Deputy Mayor Rahaman Muhammad, who was left with a graze wound to his forehead.
Muhammad’s son was taken to a local hospital. Muhammad, on a Facebook posting, said that his son “has survived the shooting” and is expected to recover.
The shooting happened the night before Mayor Ras Baraka held a 13-mile Citywide Peace Walk through all five of the city’s wards. The walk was to “support collective efforts to create a safer city and to end gun violence in Newark and other municipalities across the country.”
IRVINGTON – Law enforcers announced, on Aug. 26, the arrest of a 16-year-old boy in relation to the Aug. 19 fatal shooting of a 17 year-old here along Maple Avenue.
Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II and Irvington Public Safety Director Tracy Bowers said that the 16-year-old is being held as a juvenile on two weapons offenses plus a count each of possessing stolen property and tampering with evidence.
Stephens and Bowers only added that the suspect and the late Kensley Moneus, 17, of Irvington, “were close acquaintances.”
Moneus was found by Irvington police with multiple gunshot wounds in a backyard around 100 Maple Ave. at 10:10 p.m. Aug. 19. He was declared dead at the scene at 10:40 p.m.
Witnesses told police and the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide/Major Crimes Task Force detectives that Moneus was hosting a party there when he and another boy had a dispute. IPD had initially responded to neighbors’ noise complaints.
Moneus’ funeral arrangements have not been announced as of press time.
EAST ORANGE – One city man has been remanded to Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility since Aug. 24 while authorities look for a second one regarding an Aug. 6 shooting through a Linden bar’s front door with injuries.
Union County Prosecutor William A. Daniel and Linden Police Chief David Hart said that they had executed a search warrant that Wednesday at Najir Paige’s residence. Members of that city’s police plus UCPO detectives, Union County SWAT and Union County Sheriff’s officers took Paige, 27, under custody.
Paige is being held on first-degree attempted murder, second-degree aggravated assault and weapons possession and related charges.
Paige is accused of having left Linden’s Menga Lounge after an altercation just after 2 a.m. that Saturday. He is further said to have returned to 1906 E. Saint George Ave. with a handgun from a nearby car and firing the gun through the lounge’s front door.
A 28-year-old Elizabeth man plus a 24-year-old woman from Bridgewater and a 23-year-old Irvington woman were injured. The Irvington woman was admitted to Newark’s University Hospital in serious but stable condition with a gunshot wound to her abdomen and extremities.
Law enforcers added that they are also looking for a second East Orange man, identified as Sharif Evans, regarding the Linden lounge shooting.
ORANGE – The long decline of the industrial building here at 540 Mitchell St. ended with a fire, a partial wall collapse and its current demolition on Aug. 25.
Units from the Orange Fire Department ‘s Chief Marty DeMarzo Headquarters took the three block southwestern trip to the southeast corner of Mitchell and South Jefferson streets at 3:30 a.m. that Thursday. Arriving units found the empty three-story structure emitting “heavy fire and smoke.”
The incident commander promptly pulled two more alarms; the second for all OFD hands and the third for mutual aid. A unit from the South Essex Fire Department was among those from neighboring towns supplying on-scene mutual aid and station coverage. At least one unit each from Verizon and PSE&G also arrived at the scene.
“What was left from inside the building from previous fires and years of neglect burned quickly,” noted one observer. “The heavy fire was knocked down within 15 minutes.”
OFD and mutual aid members were beginning to enter the building’s shell when “a large part of the D wall collapsed.” Although bricks cascaded onto several cars parked along South Jefferson Street, no injuries were reported.
Mutual aid was withdrawn before sunrise, leaving two OFD units putting out hot spots and four OPD cars blocking Mitchel between Tompkins Street and Scotland Road plus South Jefferson at Central Avenue until past Noon. A Verizon truck also remained to repair one of its “damaged facilities” and to restore local service.
A city-hired contractor leveled most of the shell – owned by 540 Mitchell Urban Renewal LLC, of Fort Lee – with only its eastern wall standing as of 1 p.m. Aug. 30. The vacant factory had previously burned on Dec. 7, 2020, prompting a mutual aid response from nine neighboring departments.
WEST ORANGE – A carjacker went from taking advantage of an opportunity to “Who’s in here-What am I thinking?” and abandonment all within a Tory Corner block here Aug.3. That suspect remains wanted by the West Orange Police Department as of press time.
WOPD Chief James Abbott said that some of his officers had responded to the owner of a car from the parking lot of 60 Washington St., on the southwest corner of Columbia Street, at 12:12 p.m. that Wednesday.
The owner/driver said she had left her car running – and her four-year-old child in the backseat – to get something from Jimmy Buff’s. She returned to the lot to find the car and child gone.
Officers almost immediately found the car and its passenger about a block south on Columbia street. The mother declined medical attention for her child and herself.
The suspect was last seen walking fast and south on Columbia towards Watchung Avenue. He is described as 5-ft., 5-in. tall with short hair. He was wearing a t-shirt “with an unidentified graphic or logo.”
Township Council President Susan McCartney, on Aug. 14, would present a council proclamation to owner Thomas Racioppi celebrating the 90th anniversary of Jimmy Buff’s founding in Newark.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The mother of a murdered Columbia High School junior on one of the South Orange-Maplewood School District’s playing fields last year said that she has been informed about the suspected killer’s plea bargain – and is unhappy about it.
Hawa Fofana, mother of the late Mousa Fofana, will likely express her unhappiness before New Jersey Superior Court Judge Ronald D. Wigler at his Newark courtroom bench Sept. 1. The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office had confirmed that a meeting on “State of N.J. vs. Yohan Hernandez” has been set to start at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.
The hearing had originally been scheduled for Aug. 26 but was postponed on Aug. 24.
Hawa Fofana, on Aug. 23, said that ECPO representatives had told her that they and the suspect, Hernandez, had struck a plea bargain the day before. She was told that the suspect would be serving up to 15 years’ prison time, pending Wigler’s Sept. 1 sentencing.
“I’m not happy about it at all,” said Hawa Fofana to a reporter Aug. 23. “Fifteen years-that’s nothing. I didn’t ask many questions because I was so disappointed and sad.”
Fofana attorney Richard Pompelio said that Mousa’s father, when contacted, was “beside himself.” Pompelio added that he was not informed of the supposed plea bargain until after “the assistant prosecutor” had called Hawa Fofana over to their Newark offices “to talk about the case.”
Hernandez, 20, of Newark, was arrested, charged and held since Aug. 5, 2021 on murder, assault and weapons charges. The man, who is also in U.S. Department of Homeland Security detention, is accused of shooting Mousa Fofana on Underhill Field June 6. ECPO detectives, however, have been looking for two witnesses to the homicide.
BLOOMFIELD – Mayor Michael Venezia, on his Aug. 22 Facebook posting, explained why the “For Sale” sign on the .9-acre Roxy Florist building site in Town Centre has been replaced with a banner for a township festival.
“We’re in the process of purchasing the Roxy Florist property,” said Venezia. “The plans for this property haven’t been drawn yet, but our vision is to put (in) tables, murals, plants and trees, making it a true open space for our downtown. Once the plans are drawn, we’ll have a community meeting and gain valuable input from the community.”
Venezia’s announcement indicates that an agreement was made among Township Attorney Michael Parlevecchio, lot owner Nicholas Zois and his real estate agent. Zois, of Verona, had put the parcel facing Town Centre’s Six Points up for sale after his two-story building at 326-28 Glenwood Ave. / 55 Washington St. was demolished on Jan. 19, 2021.
The demolition was done 365 days after a Jan. 21, 2020 fire had destroyed the downtown building. The 65-year Roxy Florist plus seven other businesses and offices were displaced. The Bloomfield Center Alliance and Kolby’s Place Barber Shop have found new Town Centre places.
The to-be-signed deed sale to the township would quash any redevelopment plans on that site. A conceptual proposal for a six-story building for 24 residential units, six storefronts and 16 on-site parking spaces prompted the council to discuss the property’s future at their June 13 meeting.
Councilwoman Wartyna “Tina” Davis had proposed its open space use; attorney Parlevecchio said he would talk with the real estate agent. Venezia, citing the lot’s then-$1.499 million listing, initially said that the price was too high.
MONTCLAIR – Montclair Public Schools’ administrators and Board of Education may be given a thumbs up or thumbs down from the New Jersey Department of Education on placing a $188 million school construction bond public question on the Nov. 8 ballot.
MPS Superintendent Dr. Jonathan Ponds and the board had submitted their request for the bond issue public question referendum approval to NJDOE over the summer. Montclair’s educators have asked the state department to make its call on or by Aug. 26. A state green light will allow the BOE to approve the referendum question before the Essex County Clerk’s Sept. 7 ballot placement deadline.
What MPS is asking for registered township voters’ approval is a series of three bond issues over the next five. Bond proceeds would go to “critical health and safety facility needs, code requirements and educational adequacy.”
The identified structural needs run from HVAC and ventilation upgrades (at $76.58 million) across nine other categories to special education upgrades (at $2.82 million).
Ponds’ administrators and the board have been developing the then-$190 million bond issue since March. The average quarterly MPS property tax bill would rise to $870 a year by “Year Five” on a home whose average assessed value is $628,000. The bond issue, as of Aug. 19, has been pared down to $188 million.
MPS needs NJDOE’s blessing as a condition of holding their impending annual school board elections in November. Public school boards who hold November elections waive the concurrent annual school budget question – unless a specific need is in excess of two percent of that budget. Montclair voters will still pick three school board members for the first time on the Nov. 8 General election ballot.
BELLEVILLE – Town Manager Anthony Iacono, on Aug. 29, announced that water pressure has been restored throughout the township after two water main breaks were repaired.
The second and more localized water main break this August happened at the intersection of Passaic and Greylock avenues Aug. 25.
Iacono said that a PSE&G utility crew had inadvertently broken that line while making unrelated nearby repairs. The Aug. 25 break dropped or lost water pressure among that neighborhood’s customers. There was no boil water advisory issued this time.
Who repaired the Aug. 25 break is not immediately known as of press time. The line, like the bulk of Belleville’s water infrastructure, is owned by the township’s water department.
Iacono and Mayor Michael Melham had just issued an all-water-pressure-is-back-up notice Aug. 24 in the wake of repairs from the Aug. 9 big break under Branch Brook Park Drive North.
The Newark Water and Sewer Utility had installed a new diversion valve along with a new 42-in. diameter section on Aug. 20. A pressure test and water flushing were completed by Aug. 23.
Newark made the repairs since the broken main on its shared border with Belleville is owned by the city. That break disrupted water service to some 100,000 households in Newark, Belleville, Bloomfield and Nutley.
NUTLEY – The Nutley High School Maroon Raiders football program will pass more than one milestone when it starts their regular season opener against Bloomfield here at The Oval on Sept. 1.
Nutley and Bloomfield football fans may get to notice either Nutley Public Schools’ Athletic Director, Joe Piro, coaching on the sidelines at the 6:30 p.m. Thursday kickoff first, before workers turn on its permanent lights around sunset on Tangorra Field for the first time for a regular season opening game.
Piro was named as the football team’s interim head coach for at least this game on Aug. 24. Neither Piro nor NPS Superintendent Kent Bania would say much else.
“I’m helping out with the program in JD (Vick)’s absence,” said Piro Aug. 25. “That’s all I can say at the moment.”
Vick, who helped the Maroon Raiders into the 2021 playoffs with a 6-4 regular season win-loss record, had suddenly resigned. He was about to start his third season as head coach – including the 2019 season where he filled in for the legendary but ailing Steve DiGregorio.
Vick had been an assistant coach since 2004 when DiGregorio stepped aside to battle cancer. DiGregorio returned for a 6-0 2020 season but retired; he died last October.
Robert “Bob” Harbison, on Aug. 8, had resigned as assistant football coach and as longtime head baseball coach to focus on boys basketball. Piro and staff will be fielding 14 new players, succeeding those who had graduated in June.
