TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The attorney representing the family of a man fatally shot by a Newark Police plainclothes detective here Jan. 1, 2021, has filed a civil lawsuit Sept. 1 on behalf of his clients against the division and the detective.
Attorney Robert Tarver, in his press conference that Thursday, said that the family of Carl Dorsey III are tired of waiting for at least a Newark Police Division update on their investigation of the shooting. Tarver and his clients are now making good on their March 2021 notice of claim against the division, then-Police Chief Darnell Henry, Det. Rodney Simpkins and five unnamed officers as plaintiffs.
Tarver, who was flanked by Dorsey’s family and People’s Organization Progress leader Lawrence “Larry” Hamm, added that he has sent a copy of the suit to the State Office of the Attorney General. The AG’s office, in recent years, has automatically investigated any law enforcement officer’s shooting of a civilian.
“Here we are, three-and-a-half months away from 2023, which will be the second anniversary of his death,” said Tarver. “We still have no disposition and we’re troubled about that because this is not, from what we can see, is not a complex case.”
Sister Madinah Person, who was also at the conference, had said that Dorsey, 39, was changing her car’s flat tire early on New Year’s Day 2021 by South 11th Street and Woodland Avenue. It was during this tire change when Simpkins, then a 19-year NPD member, bumped into him.
Officers who were patrolling a block away along Avon Avenue said they heard gunshots at about 12:12 a.m. Those officers said that they saw “individuals fleeing the intersection” as they were arriving. Jamar Murphy, 39, of Irvington, was arrested for “preventing a law enforcement officer from effectuating an arrest” and weapons offences.
Although no NPD bodycam or dashcam footage was recorded, street surveillance recordings exist of the intersection encounter. That incident ended just over a year of no NPD officer-involved shootings here. POP, the ACLU-NJ and the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition have since pressed for charges to be filed against Simpkins.
IRVINGTON – Most any motorist who uses the constricted stretch of the Garden State Parkway between Exit 143C and the Essex Toll Plaza north of Exit 148 knows that it does not take much to congest that section.
Southbound GSP traffic became slow but moving after a vehicle became disabled here on 143C’s exit ramp at 2 p.m. Sept. 6. The exit is for NJ Route 124/Springfield Avenue.
All four southbound lanes also became heavy but moving after a “minor collision between vehicles” happened just south of Exit 143C at 7:57 a.m. 1. The involved vehicles were able to park themselves along the right shoulder.
Volume is believed to be the cause of four miles of congestion Sept. 2 from Exit 143C to Exit 130, for Kenilworth’s Boulevard/County Road 509.
Myrtle Avenue Carjacking
The Irvington Police Department has been looking for a car that was taken at gunpoint, and at least the suspect who pointed the gun at the victim, here since Sept. 4.
IPD officers had met with a man along the 40 block of Myrtle Avenue at 2:15 a.m. Sunday. The driver said that a male suspect had pointed a gun at him and demanded that he surrender his 2015 Chevrolet Malibu. No further details were given by press time.
EAST ORANGE – “Local Talk” has learned that last rites for the sole fatality from July 22’s apartment fire here at 161 Prospect St. were also held in this city.
A memorial service was held for Chandray “Cherry” A. Davis, 69, at East Orange’s New Hope Baptist Church Aug. 12. Her remains were interred at Hillside’s Evergreen Cemetery.
Friends and relatives had established a GoFundMe.com page to pay for Cherry’s arrangements. Her wheelchair-bound body was found in her rear third floor apartment after firefighters were able to gain access. The predawn blaze injured five firefighters from among East Orange, Montclair, Orange, Nutley and South Essex personnel and displaced 18 families.
Tributes to Cherry included her being a secretary at the Althea Gibson Academy at 490 William St. The Cotton Funeral Home-provided obituary lists her birthdate as Oct. 20, 1952.
Crash Aids Secaucus PD Arrest
While a police pursuit that had ended with a crash here Aug. 16 may not be unusual, the pursued driver/suspected car thief being arrested by Secaucus police detectives here may well be unusual. The two SPD officers, who had learned of the wanted 2020 Lexus RX being on Newark’s part of Bloomfield Avenue, resumed pursuit into Bloomfield and East Orange until the SUV had crashed against an Ampere Parkway railroad bridge pillar.
The driver – Sahmir Hughes, 25, has been charged and held in the Hudson County Jail on burglary, motor vehicle theft, eluding and possession of Naloxone. SPD Chief Dennis Miller said Hughes had stolen the Lexus from a medical office valet parking lot at about 9:40 a.m. that Tuesday morning and nearly struck a valet and a pedestrian before leaving his town.
ORANGE – Some of “Orange’s Finest” performed an active role in helping their West Orange colleagues quell a residential fire in their township Sept. 4.
An OFD unit came to 19 Weber Rd., in the St. Cloud section, on WOFD’s mutual aid call by 8:53 p.m. Sunday. Orange firefighters assisted at the scene by ventilating the 2.5-story house’s roof. They were also the scene’s Rapid Intervention Crew – firefighters who were prepared to retrieve their colleagues in case of a mishap.
A Montclair ladder company meanwhile sprayed the roofs of the house and the attached garage. The WOFD blotter states that they had also called the South Essex (Maplewood-South Orange) Fire Department to help quell the blaze.
A preliminary investigation has the fire starting in the garage, which destroyed two cars before spreading to the 1968-built house. The entire structure is heavily damaged.
An unnamed firefighter was driven by EMS to RWJBarnabas Health Cooperman-Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston for suspected smoke inhalation. The household’s dog was taken to a local animal hospital after several firefighters performed CPR on him. There were no other reported injuries.
All of 19 Weber Rd.’s occupants were evacuated.
WEST ORANGE – About the only certainty in the wake of a newly promoted West Orange Public School’s junior high school principal’s Sept. 1 driving while intoxicated arrest is that she has a Sept. 15 date here in West Orange Municipal Court.
Aretha M. Dooley-Malloy is most likely to be accompanied by Newark attorney Raymond L. Hamlin, or the attorney’s designate, while arriving at 10:30 a.m. that Thursday. The 20-year educator, whose resume includes Newark Public Schools, will likely miss that day’s activities at Liberty Middle School.
Dooley-Malloy, the school’s Anti-Bullying Specialist who is temporarily succeeding the retired longtime Principal Robert Klemt, is facing charges of refusing to take a breathalyzer test, refusing to be fingerprinted, failing to present proof of insurance and driving an unregistered.
Responding WOPD officers said they found Dooley-Malloy and her car on a Rock Spring Road front lawn late that Thursday night. A small brick wall and a sprinkler head were damaged on that lawn – as was another wall and a plant on the adjacent lawn.
Dooley-Malloy, 51, was found uninjured but her car’s front bumper had dents and scratches. Officers said that she had failed two field sobriety tests before taking her to police headquarters. It was there where WOPD members said she refused to take a breathalyzer test and to have her fingerprints scanned.
One report has Dooley-Malloy being released to Rev. William “Bill” Rutherford. Orange’s Ebenezer Baptist Church Senior Pastor and West Orange Councilman had held a fundraising dinner that night at the Rock Springs Golf Club. It is not known whether the acting principal had attended that function.
Hamlin, on Sept. 2., said that “due to the facts as I understand them, the resolution will be favorable for her.” The attorney asks the public “to let the process play out.”
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – A court hearing concerning the suspected murder of Columbia High School scholar-athlete Moussa Fofana, for the second time in eight days, has now been postponed to Sept. 22.
Essex County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Robert Florida, on Sept. 1, simply said that the hearing before State Superior Court Judge Ronald Wigler “has been adjourned until Sept. 22.” Florida, who succeeded 12-year Public Information Officer Katherine Carter, did not elaborate.
Hawa Fofana, mother of Moussa, believes that ECPO and the suspect – Yohan Hernandez, 21, of Newark, have agreed to a plea bargain. Wigler, from his Newark bench, would then pronounce the agreed-to prison sentence that Thursday.
Hernandez is accused of fatally shooting the Columbia High School junior and soccer player while both were on Untermann Field June 6, 2021.
Longtime BOE Member Withdraws Run
The last of the three incumbent South Orange-Maplewood School District Board of Education members, if an Aug. 31 report is to be believed, has ended her re-election campaign.
Johanna Wright, of South Orange, had told a local news website that she has withdrawn her bid for a fourth three-year term. The nine-year BOE member and 2004-18 South Orange Middle School science teacher’s announcement has not been carried on other news feeds as of press time.
Wright’s withdrawal follows Board President Thair Joshua and Board Member Erin Siders in becoming lame ducks on Jan. 1. Registered voters in both towns will have four challenging candidates to replace them on Nov. 8’s General election ballot.
BLOOMFIELD – Bloomfield police officers, who have recovered the car used in an Aug. 23 Bloomfield Avenue filling station robbery and assault, are looking for its four occupants-suspects.
The foursome, said 7-Eleven employees here at 122 Bloomfield Ave., had arrived and got out of a four-door white 2010 Mercedes E350 at about 5:20 a.m. that Tuesday.
Two suspects began punching the service station attendant about the face and tried to take his cash. A third stole his receipt printer.
They re-entered the Mercedes and fled east on Bloomfield Avenue. The car was found abandoned at Fourth Avenue and North Grove Street, East Orange, at 7:10 a.m. It had been reported as stolen from Little Falls.
All four males appear on station surveillance recordings as African or African American. One in the assault was wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans and white sneakers while the other wore a gray hooded sweatshirt, black pants and black sneakers with white laces.
The third suspect was running while wearing a red pullover sweater with a white logo white pants and black shoes. The fourth suspect was seen entering or exiting a rear passenger door of the Mercedes while wearing a gray zip-up jacket, black pants and black shoes.
MONTCLAIR – The Northern League-East baseball team known as the New Jersey Jackals saw their last scheduled game rained out at Augusta’s Skylands Stadium Sept. 4. Its website, since Sept. 7, has been teasing that they will announce “their new home next week.”
The Jackals, who left Yogi Berra Stadium here for the last time after hosting The New York Boulders Aug. 25, saw rain canceling their Sunday afternoon game against the Sussex County Miners. The Miners’ website thanked their fans and added that Sept. 4 ticket holders can exchange them for a 2023 game.
Any hope for the Jackals home return here during the playoffs was dashed during their Aug. 30- Sept. 4 eight-game road trip. They amassed a 3-5 tour record against the Trois-Rivieres Aigles, the Quebec Capitales and the Miners.
The Ottawa Titans, with a 56-39 regular season win-loss record, meanwhile clinched the NL-East’s third and final playoff berth over the Miners’ 54-41 record. The Jackals ended the season ranked sixth among the league’s eight teams at 45-49.
Team general manager and spokesman Reed Keller had announced Aug. 17 that the Jackals will leave the only home they have known after Aug. 25. Keller had only added then that it would stay in the independent Northern League.
It has been rumored that the Jackals will make its den at the historic and under-renovation Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson. Hinchcliffe is one of five surviving Negro League home diamonds and had been a stock and midget car speedway.
Yogi Berra Stadium remains the home diamond for Montclair State University’s RedHawks baseball team. It and its Quarry Field / New Softball Stadium are on MSU grounds crossing the Montclair-Little Falls border.
BELLEVILLE – Belleville Town Hall officials put up mourning bunting for one of their own, Thomas Salzano, above its main entrance Aug. 21-26.
Salzano, 83, who had been Belleville’s Tax Assessor for 12 years, died here on Aug. 21. His Funeral Mass was held at Nutley’s Holy Family Church, prior to his burial in Clifton, Aug. 26.
Born Aug. 5, 1939, Salzano was a lifelong Bellevillite except for his tour in the U.S. Navy. He was first appointed as tax assessor by Belleville Township Commissions in 1996 and had retired in 2012.
Salzano had been acting assessor when a dispute among the commissioners over permanently appointing him split Belleville’s elders 1994-95. Then-State Superior Court Assignment Judge Alvin Weiss eventually ruled in Salzano’s favor in 1995.
Salzano, Mario Drodz and Elvin Pereira ran together in the May 13, 2008 election for Fourth, Second and Third Ward Township Council seats. A majority of participating Belleville voters chose incumbents John J. Notari, Steven J. Rovell and Paul J. MacDonald over the then-State assemblyman Ralph Caputro-backed challenging ticket.
Wife Diane, sons Roger and Alan, brothers Ralph and Carl, sister Mary Grace Fogle, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren are among his survivors.
Memorial donations may be made to the national Kidney Foundation (www.kidney.org) and/or the American Diabetes Association (diabetes.org).
NUTLEY – Sept. 1’s Nutley High School Maroon Raiders victory over Bloomfield, 20-7, under The Oval’s Tangorra Field lights can be called anything but the start of “The Head Coach Joe Piro Era.”
The first NHS football game and 2022 regular season opener under permanent lighting was, indeed, for the history and the record books. The game, for example, honored the 1992 NHS championship team.
Except for the Bloomfield Bengals opening touchdown drive and extra point in the first quarter, the game went Nutley’s way. The Maroon Raiders, guided by NHS Interim Head Coach Piro, came back with a five-play drive to their first TD. They capitalized on a Bloomfield miscue to take the lead with a two-point conversion.
NHS broke through a defensive tug of war with a 30-yard TD pass and extra point with 9 minutes, 42 seconds left in the third quarter. The maroon Raiders added seven more points in the fourth quarter, after intercepting BHS’s football, for a final 20-7 score.
The Maroon Raiders got to keep the Mayor’s Cup in Nutley before what Piro estimated was 2,500 grandstand spectators. Piro, a former NHS player whose day job is as Nutley Public Schools’ Athletic Director, insists he is interim head coach.
Piro stepped in when two-year coach JD Vick “took a leave of absence for personal reasons” in mid-August. NHS’s regular season of home Friday Night Lights continues on Sept. 9 (against Montclair) and 23 (Passaic Valley) and Oct. 15 (Wayne Valley).
