TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Participating registered voters in the 28th Legislative District will be choosing between at least Joy B. Freeman, of Newark, and Renee C. Burgess, of Irvington, in Nov. 8’s special election to succeed the retired State Sen. Ronald C. Rice (D-Newark).
Members of the Essex Republican Party Organization had selected Freeman Sept. 14 and sent her name to Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin’s Elections Division to put her name on the ballot. Freeman is the party’s South Ward Vice Chairwoman.
Essex County Democratic Committee members, in a Sept. 9 convention, selected Irvington Council President Burgess to succeed Rice – who retired for health reasons Aug. 31. Burgess’ selection meant that Councilwoman Jamillah Z. Beasley was promoted by Irvington Mayor Anthony “Tony” Vauss to Council President with Township Council consent and Irvington Housing Authority President Darlene Brown was tapped to take Beasley’s South Ward Council seat.
Both major parties had until Sept. 15 to tell Durkin and his staff of their Nov. 8 special election candidates to complete Rice’s unexpired term. It is not immediately known whether any independent or minor party candidates also made that ballot. Rice’s successor will also be available next year to run for a full state senate term.
Teen girl dies from self-inflicted shot
A South Ward neighborhood has been plunged into mourning in the wake of a 13-year-old girl who had accidentally and fatally shot herself at about 11:30 p.m. here on Sept. 16.
Newark Police officers at the scene – the 200 block of Schley Street – had called the shooting as accidental at 2 a.m. Sept. 17. Newark Police Director Fritz G. Frage said that the officers had responded to a shooting report, found the girl and a weapon inside an address and rushed her to University Hospital. She was declared dead at 5:27 p.m. Sept. 18.
IRVINGTON – Relatives and friends have been making funeral arrangements of a township man while Newark and ECPO Homicide/Major Crimes Task Force detectives have been looking for his killer since Sept. 14.
Newark Public Safety Director Frage and Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II said that city officers had responded to a 7 p.m. report that Wednesday of “several shots fired near the Bradley Court Housing Project.”
Officers converged on South Orange and North Munn avenues at 7:02 p.m. – where they had found Kyle G. Eley, 50, of Irvington, “suffering bullet wounds to several parts of his body.”
Local EMS rushed Eley to University Hospital – where he was declared dead at 7:26 p.m.
City and county officers combed the housing project, Vailsburg Park, the Speedway Avenue School Academies and neighboring properties’ grounds for a suspect and/or additional victims.
EAST ORANGE – A city man was killed in Newark and another three men were shot near that city’s border in two separate incidents on Sept. 14 and 17-18.
Relatives and friends of Wayne Jones, 41, are preparing his last rites while Essex County and detectives are looking for his and another man’s shooter since Sept. 17. Jones’ funeral arrangements have not been announced as of Sept. 21.
An ECPO spokesman said that Newark police officers had converged on the 20 block of Ridgewood Avenue on a shots fired call at 11:45 p.m. Saturday. It was there where Jones was found “suffering multiple gunshot wounds. Jones was rushed to University Hospital, where he was declared dead by 3:12 a.m. Sunday.
A second man, found nearby by NPD officers, was treated for a non-life-threatening bullet wound and released.
Three men were meanwhile injured by at least three other males while at North 18th Street and Eaton Place Sept. 14. EOPD officers said that they had responded to a call of gunshots fired in that area at 5:44 p.m. that Thursday.
Officers called for EMS and the county’s major crimes detectives when they found one man shot in the chest and two others “hit in their lower extremities.” A caller said that a white four-door BMW pulled up to 45 No. 18th St. with “several people aboard.” three of the occupants shot at the standing trio and sped away.
One victim was treated at and released from University Hospital. The man with the chest wound and the other with the lower extremity wound had remained there for observation as of 3 p.m. Sept. 15.
ORANGE – “Dig We Must” may sum up the state of two public works projects, some 100 feet apart, on Mitchell Street here in The Valley.
An excavator from Control Service LLC, for example, is completing the demolition of 536 and 540 Mitchell St. The Jersey City contractor, which was filling a basement with remaining brick rubble at press time, was hired by the city to finish what a pair of fires, the latest on Aug. 25, had started with 540 Mitchell.
540 Mitchell was a three-story, brick and wood truss building dating back to the city’s Victorian Era. What appeared to have been home of the No Name Hat factory and part of the Monroe Calculator Company complex as late as the 1920s was most recently the site of John Berardi’s furniture refinishing until it had moved out in 2007.
The building on Mitchell and South Jefferson streets’ southeastern corner became city property in its Central Orange Valley Redevelopment Zone. Although Orange had sold it to 540 Mitchell LLC, of Fort Lee, it was subjected to a pair of destructive fires on Dec. 7, 2020 and Aug. 25, 2022.
The one-story 536 Mitchell building has also been leveled. It was another Monroe building whose last tenant, Tryco Tools, left in 2006 – and is in the city’s valley redevelopment zone.
General contractor Grad, on behalf of Essex County, has removed the Mitchell Street Bridge over the Rahway River-East Branch culvert some 100 feet west of the South Jefferson Street T-intersection. It has diverted the stream so it can dig into the WPA-era culvert’s floor and walls for the new bridge’s support pillars.
The $719,559.15 project is one of several culvert bridge replacements commissioned by the county this year. A similar project is slated for West Orange’s part of Lakeside Avenue and Wigwam Brook. The Rahway River-East Branch doubles as the Valley neighborhood’s Orange-West Orange border.
WEST ORANGE – A former township resident and former NFL New York Jets player, as of presstime, remains at large for burglary, simple criminal assault and aggravated assault of a Pittsburgh area woman since Sept. 12.
North Versailles, Pa. police have issued an arrest warrant on Rontez L. Miles.
Miles, 33, is accused of breaking through a woman’s locked back door that Monday and beating her in front of her son and neighbors. He is accused of dragging her by her hair out of her bed onto the front lawn.
A man who was in the home said he awoke to Miles’ beating him before turning on the woman; he promptly called 911. Motion lights came on outside of the woman’s address during her assault, prompting her neighbors to also call police.
The victim dashed back inside when Miles began damaging her parked car and barricaded herself within her 11-year-old son’s room. Miles had left before police to find a bloodied hallway, stairs and bathroom.
The woman was treated at a local hospital for a swollen lip and eye and a possible broken nose and injuries to one of her feet and legs, among other wounds.
Miles, as of Sept. 11, was a coach for his alma mater, Pittsburgh’s Woodland Hills High School Wolverines football team. The California University of Pennsylvania Vulcans player and undrafted free agent had lived in West Orange while a Jet safety from 2013 until he had moved to Forest Hills, Pa. after 2019.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – It may be up to Superior Court Judge Ronald D. Wigler in Thursday’s scheduled plea bargain hearing whether the several dozen “Justice for Moussa” marchers and officials have persuaded his anticipated sentencing.
Representatives of the group, led by mother Hawa Fofana and former Maplewood Mayor Fred Profeta, are to present an at least 900-signature petition decrying a proposed plea bargain to Acting Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II in advance of Wigler’s Newark courtroom hearing.
Several dozen people had marched from Columbia High School’s courtyard to the Maplewood Municipal Building’s front steps Sept. 15 to protest what they say is ECPO’s proposed 15-year prison sentence for Yohan Hernandez. Hernandez’s attorney had said his client had shot in defense of himself and his younger brother.
Hernandez, 21, is accused of shooting CHS junior Moussa Fofana and a second student on South Orange-Maplewood School District’s Underhill Field June 6, 2021. Fofana, a CHS Cougars soccer player, died.
Hawa Fofana said that she was never informed by county prosecutors of the supposed plea bargain firsthand.
BLOOMFIELD – It is “one down, three to go,” as of Sept. 14, when it comes to township detectives arresting the quartet who assaulted and robbed a Bloomfield Avenue filling station attendant here on Aug. 23.
Township detectives, according to that Wednesday’s announcement, said they had arrested Quaanamoni Phanelson, 20, of East Orange. She has since been held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility on a charge each of robbery that used force or bodily injury and conspiracy thereof. There is a further detainer placed by the Little Falls Police Department.
BFD detectives said that they had found “key evidence” in the 2010 Mercedes E350 that was found abandoned at East Orange’s North Grove Street and Fourth Avenue late Aug. 23. There is video surveillance footage from the 7-Eleven at 122 Bloomfield Ave. where a female matching her description got out of that car there.
Phanelson and a second male are accused of exiting the Mercedes at the station at 5:20 a.m. Aug. 23 and proceeding to beat the attendant and take a receipt printer. Another two males also left the car to join in the employee’s assault.
The felonious foursome returned to the car and sped southeast into East Orange’s part of Ampere. A Little Falls couple had reported that the Mercedes was stolen. The victim was treated by local EMS at the scene for minor injuries.
Anyone with information of the assault and the other three suspects are to call BPD Det. Matt Rubcinaccio at (973) 680-4084 or Mrubbinaccio@bloomfieldnjpd.com.
GLEN RIDGE – The borough’s becoming either the first full eastbound or last westbound municipality on the coming Essex-Hudson Greenway took a major step forward Sept. 14 – just short of 20 years to the day when Benson Street Station took its last “Lower Boonton Line” riders.
Gov. Phil Murphy (D-Rumson) announced that Wednesday at nearby Branch Brook Park in Newark that the state has bought the 12-mile “Lower Boonton Line” right-of way from the Norfolk Southern freight railroad for $65 million. The former Erie Railroad Greenwood Lake Division trunk line ran from 100 feet into Montclair – where the Montclair Connection link was made in 2002 – through Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, Belleville, Newark, Kearny and Secaucus into Jersey City.
The state, said Murphy, will turn the decommissioned rail line’s right-of-way over to the Open Space Institute for redevelopment into a walking/hiking/biking “rail trail.” The Governor is also granting OSI $20 million of its received federal American Rescue Plan money so it can start the latter’s estimated $35 million phased renovation.
The E-H Greenway is to be fully open on or by 2026. The work ahead includes evicting private entities in North Newark and elsewhere on the right-of-way, adapting the WR Drawbridge over the Passaic River between Newark and Kearny and bypassing the permanently open DB Draw on the Hackensack River between Kearny and Secaucus.
NJTransit realized a decades-long project goal by opening the Montclair Connection, a pair of 2,000-foot-long tracks along Montclair’s Elm Street, Sept. 21, 2002. The connection has since linked the former Erie Boonton Line with the Morris & Essex’s Montclair Branch. Trains have run on the combined Montclair-Boonton Line since Sept. 22, 2002.
The connection meant that passenger service ended on the Norfolk Southern-owned LBL Sept. 20, 2002. Glen Ridge and Bloomfield riders have since had to catch MBL trains at their respective Montclair Branch stations. NS trains stopped serving its last customer, Hartz’s Bloomfield plant, in 2012 and have since filed for abandonment.
Benson Street Station, which started life in the 1880s as Chestnut Hill Station, became a private residence.
MONTCLAIR – Although a resident, who is a former zoning board member and former architecture design consultant, had pleaded guilty to third-degree theft by deception Sept. 1, neither the state nor the victim will see $29,000 in restitution any time soon.
Tom Reynolds – in a plea bargain between his attorney, Robert Brass, and ECPO – had confessed to third-degree theft by deception, money laundering and identity theft before Superior Court Judge Wigler.
Reynolds had admitted that he took $75,000 from Evin Nison, of East Brunswick, over the managing the design of the latter’s building on Newark’s West Runyon Street in 2017. He had also confessed to getting a fraudulent mortgage on the said property and to bribing a Newark construction code official. (Reynolds had cooperated in prosecutors’ separate investigation of the bribed city official.)
Reynolds – who was a Montclair Zoning Board of Adjustment member 2012-19 and president of Green Stories architectural consultancy 2013-22, said he used the ill-gotten proceeds to finance his bride’s wedding and honeymoon. Nison said, however, that Reynolds stole $100,00 and caused the mortgage company to repossess the Newark property.
The Brass-ECPO plea bargain also comes with downgrading the charges from their second-degree filing and 250 hours’ community service. The $29,000 in restitution, however, will be held in escrow until Reynolds vs. Nison is resolved.
Reynolds had filed a countersuit in civil court against Nison, stating that he should not pay restitution since both had retained the Newark property.
BELLEVILLE – The Belleville Public Schools Board of Education and two of its trustees may be receiving an ethics complaint, as the result of their Sept. 19 approval of a bill list line item, on or by the Columbus\Indigenous Peoples Day holiday.
Board President Luis Muniz and Vice President Gabrielle V. Bennett-Meany were among the majority of BBOE Trustees who had routinely approved BPS’ bill list since July 1, 2021, authorized payment of $2,950 monthly rent for office space at 335 Union Ave.
The trustees, on Schools Superintendent Dr. Richard Tomko’s recommendation, had approved the five-year office rental lease with 335 Union’s owner, Michael Melham, on July 1, 2021. Melham, who owns the residential-office mixed use house, happens to be Belleville’s Mayor.
The mayor is also chairman and treasurer of his A Better Belleville election campaign group. Melham, through ABB, ran his own mayoral elections and field council trustee candidates in the township’s nonpartisan elections.
ABB uses 335 Union as its campaign address on its N.J. Election Law Enforcement Commission filings. Muniz and Bennett-Meany were ABB trustee candidates in 2019 and are on this year’s ballot. Although Muniz had abstained on the July 1, 2021 lease agreement vote, he and Bennett-Meany have routinely approved subsequent rent payments to 335 Union. Former trustee and current candidate Michael Sheldon, who is filing a complaint with the ELEC, said that the pair should have recused themselves to prevent a conflict of interest.
NUTLEY – What started out as a resident’s car being found damaged “and abandoned” in Lyndhurst had led to his arrest on attempted burglary charges some 72 hours later.
James Defazio, 43, of Nutley, said LPD Detective Lt. Vincent Auteri Sept. 13, had appeared in their headquarters Aug. 30 to retrieve his 2015 Hyundai Santa Fe that officers had impounded earlier that Tuesday from along the 400 block of Valley View Avenue.
The headquarters desk sergeant explained to Defazio that his SUV was towed on a resident’s report of it being “abandoned.” The Santa Fe was missing its right front tire and had sustained front end damage. Responding LPD officers said that, after a search in vain for a crash site, pulled the vehicle for being “a roadway hazard.”
Defazio explained that he had parked the Hyundai after a tire blowout; the front-end damage was “old.” The desk sergeant told him to come back on Sept. 1 to start processing the Santa Fe’s release.
A Valley View Avenue resident, on Aug. 31, informed LPD of a burglary near where the SUV was parked. A Lyndhurst township employee, later that Wednesday, found “several items that appeared to be dropped or discarded” behind the municipal building. A video surveillance recording there from the previous night, said Auteri, revealed a man matching Defazio’s description discarding the said items.
Detectives, when Defazio returned Sept. 1, questioned him about the residential burglary and placed him under arrest. Search warrants on the SUV and Defazio’s Nutley residence found “additional proceeds from the burglary.” LPD further found that Defazio was employed by a Nutley HVAC company that had earlier worked in the burgled house.
Defazio is being held in Hackensack’s Bergen County Jail on three counts of knowingly receiving stolen property plus forcibly entering a property without authorization and theft of movable property. Auteri added that LPD detectives are looking for connections with other recent area burglaries.
