Town Watch
EAST ORANGE – It has taken a long time but a block of Davis Street, off North Oraton Parkway, was honorably renamed Gladys Eva Blount Way before some 75 adults and Mildred Barry Garvin School children here Oct. 19.
Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green, Fifth Ward Councilman Mustafa Ali-M. Brent, Blount’s four great-granddaughters and grandson Willie Davis IV unveiled the street sign after 2 p.m. that Wednesday. Blount herself, 100, was watching live on social media from her current Ruskin, Fla. address.
Blount, a hairdresser who raised two children at 36 North Oraton Pkwy., was a member of the Women’s Army Corps during World War Two – one from among the 855 selected African American Women and 6,000 enlistees. She served in the segregated 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion in the European Theater 1945-46 and is one of “The Six-Triple-Eight’s” six surviving members.
By “taking a long time,” this street renaming was postponed from Sept. 27 due to the weather. It was hoped that Blount would have personally attended.
It could also be said that Blount and her peers had waited since 1945 – 77 years – to receive their full honors.
Recent research has led President Joseph Biden, for example, to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the 6888th earlier this year. Mayor Green personally delivered Blount a key to the city, a city medal of honor and a proclamation from him and the City Council July 28.
NEWARK – It appears that several overseas news sources have not let the lack of the official Essex County Prosecutor’s Office disclosure of an Oct. 27 shooting victim from identifying him.
Newark Police Division officers, responding to a shots fired report, arrived at 153 Isabella Ave., in the West Ward’s Vailsburg section, at 9:30 p.m. that Thursday. They had found there “an unconscious and unresponsive man with multiple bullet wounds.”
The man, who was unidentified by the ECPO Homicide/Major Crimes task Force, “died a short time later.” NPD and, later, County task force members taped off that block and searched for field evidence.
Three Guyanese media outlets, however, have identified one of their own as the victim. They had identified the victim as Rayon Shepherd. Two of the sources ran separate photos of the late Shepherd.
There has been no ECPO confirmation that Shepherd was the victim. No obituaries, funeral arrangements or more details have been published as of press time.
The fatal Isabella Avenue shooting remains as an active investigation.
IRVINGTON – Police detectives here and in Newark want to ask a shooting victim how he had walked 1.5 miles while wounded from one town to the other.
Irvington officers said they were patrolling border streets when they found a man, bleeding from his back, at their 458 14th Ave., at 4:35 a.m. Oct. 30. Essex County Sheriff’s officers also assisted at the scene.
The victim was rushed to Newark’s University Hospital – but not before he told officers that he had been shot at 458 18th Ave., Newark. The Newark Police Division was subsequently notified.
Twp Man Killed in East Orange
Funeral arrangements for Carl Brown, 36, of Irvington, were being made as of press time while ECPO Homicide and Major Crimes Task Force detectives have been search for his killer since Oct. 21.
Responding East Orange police officers said they had found Brown with multiple gunshot wounds in front of 411 Park Ave. at 5:50 p.m. that Friday. Brown was rushed to University Hospital – where he was declared dead at 6:18 p.m.
Brown’s shooting happened about two blocks east of where Letrell Duncan, 16, was shot and killed Oct. 3. The respective shootings otherwise have no known relation.
ORANGE – What started out as a dispute over the use of an air pressure pump in Bayonne Oct. 30 has left a city resident in South Kearny’s Hudson County jail as of press time.
Asia Beasley, 28, said a Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Oct. 31, is being held on charges of aggravated assault, making terroristic threats and weapons possession from an 11:30 p.m. incident at the Quick Chek at 175 E. 22nd St. in Bayonne’s Old Hook section.
A motorist told Bayonne police that he was the next in a line of people who were taking their turns at the air pump. He was kneeling by one of the tires he was about to fill with air when he noticed a woman standing with a knife in one of her hands. The victim said the suspect told him she was in a rush and demanded that she use the air generator before him.
When police arrived on a call of two patrons in a dispute, said Bayonne Capt. Eric Amato, both the suspect and the victim had left the scene. BPD officers used a description from the other line waiters of the suspect’s car and her fleeing north on Route 440 to track them down.
Officers stopped the driver, later identified as Beasley, on Rt. 440 at the Goldsborough Drive traffic light by the Marine Terminal at 11:35 p.m. A motor vehicle search yielded a knife.
WEST ORANGE – A township resident who was a 13-year UN official has been serving a 15-year federal prison sentence since Oct. 27 for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman while on assignment in Iraq in 2016.
US District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald gave Karim Elkorany, 39, the 15-year sentence from her Manhattan bench that Thursday. It was the result of a plea bargain that U.S. Department of Justice-Southern New York District prosecutors and Elkorany had agreed to on May 24.
Elkornay, by taking the guilty plea, confessed that he had drugged and sexually assaulted “Victim 1” while she was unconscious in or about November 2016. The UN communication specialist was working in Iraq July 2016-November 2018.
Victim 1 reported the incident to the UN, which conducted an investigation. Elkorany gave a voluntary interview with special agents from the FBI’s New York Field Office at his West Orange home Nov. 3, 2017.
A “Victim-2,” a contractor for the UN, meanwhile accused Elkorany of drugging and assaulting her “on multiple occasions” in Iraq and the US 2014-19. Elkorany had worked for UNICEF in Iraq October 2013-April 2016.
Elkorany, as part of the plea bargain, also admitted he had drugged and/or sexually assaulted Victim 2 and 16 additional victims. He will be on three years’ supervised release when his imprisonment is done and will be subject to paying to-be-determined restitution.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Police from various parts of New Jersey and from as far as Allentown, Pa., gathered here to pay tribute to the late James “Jim” DeVaul Oct. 28.
A motorcade, led by 42 motorcycle officers and followed by 10 cars, paced southwest on Springfield Avenue towards the Jacob A. Holle Funeral Home on Millburn Avenue at about 1:10 p.m. Friday. Police riders – including those from Belleville, Newark, the Essex County Sheriff’s Office and Fort Lee – took turns closing side streets along the way.
The motorcade joined the DeVaul family and township officials at Holle to escort the late police chief’s final procession to the Maplewood Municipal Building for his funeral. That final march, including the Essex County Pipe and Drum Corps, walked beneath an American flag raised by a pair of ladder trucks from the two-town South Essex Fire Department.
Mounted police were also present, including a horse riderless except for a pair of boots facing backwards in its stirrups. Acting Police Chief Albert Salley marched while holding DeVaul’s hat in his hands. Buses on NJTransit’s No. 25 and 70 routes were among the traffic detoured during that Friday’s ceremony and for the previous night’s visitation at Holle.
DeVaul, 53 – who took ill Oct. 2 and died at Allentown’s Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest Oct. 21 – first came here by way of New York’s Long Island and Bath, Pa. The Columbia High School Class of 1987 graduate joined “Maplewood’s Finest” in 1993.
The outdoor funeral ended with a State Police helicopter flyover and the motorcade’s resumption. The procession paused at CHS and several township locations dear to DeVaul before heading to a private interment.
BLOOMFIELD / GLEN RIDGE – October marks the changing of the township’s Health and Human Services Director leadership that affects operations here and in eight other municipalities among three counties.
Mayor Michael Venezia and the Township Council, on Oct. 1, has promoted F. Michael Fitzpatrick as HHS Director. Fitzpatrick succeeds Karen Lore, who has retired after 34 years’ township service.
Fitzpatrick is overseeing the department’s prevention, inspection, education and/or animal control services for Glen Ridge and Caldwell in Essex County, Chatham, Lincoln Park and Mountain Lakes in Morris County and Union County’s Cranford and Springfield Township.
Lore was promoted from Acting Health Director to Director on Oct. 19, 2012. The Jersey City native was working in an East Orange mental health outpatient facility in 1988 when she answered a Bloomfield health want ad for a social service specialist.
Lore was promoted from among the 20-person department. It was under her tenure that “Human Services” was added. She had expanded neighboring shared service agreements from Glen Ridge and Caldwell to the present eight.
In a recent interview, Lore said that she was considering retirement but stayed on when the global COVID pandemic struck in March 2020. She may return to clinical social work.
It is not immediately known whether Fitzpatrick is a candidate as Lore’s ultimate successor.
MONTCLAIR – Those who follow the Montclair High School football team may want to record its 4-4 2022 regular season win-loss record before the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association erases it.
The MHS Mounties, within a 24-hour span Oct. 27-28 went from becoming a playoff contender in the NJSIAA North Jersey Section 2, Group 5 quarterfinals to their entire season being voided. It was brought to the state sports sanctioning body’s attention by Montclair Public Schools administrators Friday morning that it had used an academically ineligible player during the eight-game regular season.
“We learned last night (Oct. 27) that an academically ineligible student was allowed to play for the MHS football team this season due to an administrative oversight,” said MPS Superintendent Dr. Jonathan Ponds Oct. 28. “We immediately reported this situation to the NJSIAA, which informed us that the team has to forfeit its wins this year and is therefore ineligible for the state playoffs – including tonight’s game against Ridgewood.”
The Mounties were to visit Ridgewood 6:30 p.m. that Friday, hoping to repeat its Oct. 14 17-10 regular season upset against the Maroons. That now-7-2 team, which accepted Montclair’s forfeit, is to host West Orange in Nov. 4’s semifinal.
David Cantor, MPS’ first communications director, said that they were informed on Thursday by former MHS head football coach John Fiore. Fiore, who left to become an Elizabeth High School freshman coach, said that an anonymous caller told him about the ineligible player and repeated the “weird story” to Cantor.
Ponds added that his administrators are talking with the NJSIAA about “solutions” other than forfeiting the playoffs.
MHS’s regular season wins against Nutley (Sept. 9, 38-6), Livingston (Sept. 22, 31-17) and Columbia (Oct. 22, 21-7).are also facing NJSIAA erasure.
BELLEVILLE – Two of the township’s elected officials may be regretting either being the honorees of a Feb. 18 fundraiser held by Premier Developers or their Sept. 27 approval of the latter’s seeking an “Area in Need of Redevelopment” study of the Irvine-Cozzarelli Memorial Home.
Mayor Michael Melham, Deputy Mayor Naomy DePena and Councilman-at-Large Thomas Graziano were in a “Cocktail Soiree” held by Premier at an Englewood Cliffs restaurant. Those wanting to buy tickets were directed to the developer’s address up Sylvan Road from the event.
The Feb. 18 party helped raise funds for “A Better Belleville” re-election campaign efforts. Melham, who doubles as ABB’s campaign manager, DePena and Graziano were re-elected May 10 by a majority of participating township voters.
Premier, however, sought an ANIOR study for the Irvine-Cozzarelli parlor at 274-78 Washington Ave. from the Township Council Sept. 27. Belleville elders authorized the said study on a 3-2-2 split vote.
Although Graziano joined Third Ward Councilman Vincent Cozzarelli in abstaining from the vote, Melham and DePena joined Fourth Ward Councilman John Notari in approving the AINOR study’s green lighting. First Ward Councilwoman Marie Strumolo-Burke and Second Ward Councilman Steve Rovell voted “no.”
Premier, for the record, is constructing The Essex on the former Pioneer Auto Group used car lot at 74-102 Washington Ave. since its Oct. 22, 2020 groundbreaking. The five-story apartment building was originally approved by the Belleville Planning Board for 80 apartment units until that panel, in February 2020, allowed for 78 more units and some street-level retail space.
DEVELOPING: Funeral arrangements are pending for township resident and Newark Police Officer Ricardo Barbosa, 29, who died at his Bell Street home here after 11:30 p.m. Oct. 28. BPD officers had applied CPR on the six-year officer before he had succumbed to a gunshot wound. Barbosa, who worked as a community police officer in Newark’s Ironbound, has a GoFundMe.com page founded for his funeral expenses.
NUTLEY – Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s New Jersey District Office are hoping that the president and a top officer of a real investment company will follow their head salesman, a Nutley resident, in pleading guilty to fraud conspiracy.
Arthur S. Scuttaro, 62, pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud before US District Judge Evelyn Paden in Newark federal court Oct. 13. Scuttaro was National Realty Investors Advisors LLC’s head of sales.
Scuttaro’s guilty plea came the day after a federal grand jury in Newark handed down an 18-count indictment against him, Thomas Nicholas Salzano and Rey E. Grabato II for securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy thereof. Salzano, 64, of Secaucus, and Grabato, 43, of Hoboken and the Philippine Republic, were NRIA’s respective “shadow” CEO and president.
Salzano and Grabato, said US Attorney-New Jersey District Philip R. Sellinger, are accused of defrauding investors and potential investors of $650 million between Feb. 1, 2018 and Jan. 1, 2022. The duo is said to have misled investors through false statements of their positions, NRIA’s financial status and “material omissions.”
The pair are further accused of defrauding the IRS in its attempt to collect $26 million owed them.
“Their criminal tactics were straight out of the Ponzi scheme playbook so they can cheat their investors and line their own pockets, said Sellinger.” Remember the old adage that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Scuttaro is to be sentenced on Feb. 23. He faces a maximum five year prison sentence and an up to $250,000 in fines.
