TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Inspectors are still evaluating the integrity of Stephen Crane Village Building No. 12 as well as pinpointing the source of the explosion that demolished its northern end here at 6:36 p.m. July 21.
Security camera footage from Building No. 17 across Stephen Crane Plaza / Frankie Valli Way, as released July 23, showed an orange fireball seen through a second floor apartment window before the north end blew out and the roof partially collapsed.
Rubble from the two exploded apartments were cleared, leaving an erect chain link fence behind as of 7 a.m. July 25. A tarpaulin covers the exposed end of Building 12’s remaining vacated apartments between So. Hawthorne and So. Pine lanes. A rented moving truck, its back to one of the entrance doors, was parked on a So. Pine Lane lawn.
One man, who resided in the second floor apartment, remains in critical condition in RWJBarnabas Health Cooperman Barnabas Burn Unit as of Tuesday. He and one other person were extricated by first responders and another four were injured. The American Red Cross Disaster Action Team and the Newark Housing Authority had provided emergency services for the 31 people among 12 families displaced by the explosion and evacuation.
Public Service Electric & Gas inspectors combed the village grounds, going door to door among the 28 two-story buildings, to detect any natural gas leaks. Residents told reporters that there was a PSE&G crew on the grounds that Friday; a utility spokesman, on Sunday, said that the said crew were working on an unrelated matter.
Stephen Crane Village, south of the Belleville border, was among several built in Newark with federal housing administration funding around 1940. The NHA-owned and operated property is of the same vintage as the demolished Seth Boyden and James Baxter houses and the closed Haynes West houses. While the NHA has been demolishing the 1940-era housing the last 20 years, there are no immediate plans to replace Stephen Crane Village.
IRVINGTON – The two 16-year-old Newark boys accused of stealing an SUV July 5 with a 7-year-old autistic boy inside on July 5 may have some additional burglary charges levied against them.
Readers may recall that one car thief ran out of a blue Hyundai that had bulled up on the 110 Elmwood Ave. that Wednesday morning, got into the Cadillac SUV that was unlocked and was running in a driveway. The SUV driver-owner said he had just strapped his son in the back seat and was taking an emptied curbside recycling can back to the backyard.
The Cadillac and Hyundai drivers fled for three blocks before they realized they had a passenger and ditched the former car. The suspects and the Hyundai were later found and arrested in Newark.
Maplewood police detectives have meanwhile told their ECPO colleagues that the blue Hyundai four door Sonata is the same one used in thefts in their College Hill and Newark Heights sections.
A Rutgers Street resident told responding MPD officers that someone in a blue Sonata noticed some unattended bags on the property, brought them into the Hyundai and fled early on July 5.
Police also went to the Sunoco station at 1459 Springfield Ave. near the Irvington border that same Wednesday. The victim said that a blue Hyundai had pulled up alongside her own vehicle, allowing a Sonata occupant to swipe her purse from within.
EAST ORANGE – Residents of a First Ward intersection neighborhood awoke to the sounds of sirens, a car collision, running footsteps and hovering helicopter blades early July 25.
The sirens suddenly ended at the intersection of Springdale and Midland Avenues around 6 a.m. Tuesday. One of East Orange police’s marked cruisers had collided with a grey four-door late model BMW that it and two other squad cars had been chasing.
The impact damaged the police cruiser’s left front corner after striking the suspected BMW. It is not known whether the collision came from a deliberate nudge by EOPD or was accidental.
Also, the impact caused the BMW’s passenger side airbags to inflate. Its engine began smoking, prompting an extinguishment by an EOFD engine crew. The car’s three occupants fled, causing a foot chase by some of the city’s “finest.”
A Pulse EMS van had also responded to the scene. A police officer, presumably from the struck cruiser, entered the ambulance – which left the scene by 6:30 a.m.
Springfield and Midland were closed, detouring NJTransit’s No. 34 M buses and other traffic, until an East Coast Recovery Board flatbed to truck took away the BMW and the squad car.
Neither the EOPD nor ECPO, as of 1 p.m. Tuesday, have not said why the BMW was being pursued, any extent of the officer’s injury, or whether any of the suspects have been caught.
ORANGE – The Orange Police Department has put out a “Be on the Lookout” bulletin July 24 for a 2010 Kia Forte – and the man who had carjacked it from its owners.
The OPD blotter states that officers had responded to a 2:30 a.m. Monday report of a car stolen from the 400 block of Bradford Place – and found the victims waiting for them.
They said that “an armed suspect approached them” and stole the Kia. The suspect and the car were last seen fleeing on the North Ward street by West Orange’s Watchung Heights and Tory Corner neighborhoods.
No one was physically injured in the carjacking. The 2010 Kia Forte’s New Jersey license plate number is: J21-RDJ.
WEST ORANGE – County authorities are investigating back-to-back bias vandalism to an Orange Valley business and are gathering information on a reported third to a next door studio here July 12-13.
ECPO, said acting prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II July 19, are pursuing the July 12-13 vandalism of Harper’s Cafe at 134 S. Valley Rd., as hate crimes. Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura, that same Wednesday, posted a $10,000 Crimestoppers page towards information leading to the arrests of the suspects or suspects.
West Orange police officers first called Harper’s Cafe owner Garan Dixon after they had found black paint splattered on its front door window and on displayed Pride flags; the front door window was also broken by a brick WOPD estimated that this incident happened between 7:25 p.m. July 12 and 7:51 a.m. July 13.
Dixon closed the cafe at regular time July 13 – only to get called back by WOPD officers later that Thursday night. Officers believe that a person or persons pulled down Pride flags and smashed the storefront window with a brick between 9:30 and 10:30 p.m.
Dixon, while making repairs July 14, said he has at least one Pride flag on display to show his support of the LGBTQIA+ community and had added a second to his store front earlier this year.
Ambar Jimenez meanwhile said that she had received a phone call at her photo studio at 136 S. Valley July 13. The caller asked her why she was wearing braids and whether she is Black. When Jimenez said that she is Hispanic, the caller told her that she should move her studio out and “We’re going to do something to your business.”
The West Orange Chamber of Commerce voiced their support of Harper’s. Mayor Susan McCartney and the West Orange Rainbow Coalition joined in denouncing the vandalism. An estimated 150 people came to Harper’s July 16 to help complete repairs and show their support.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The Montrose Early Child Development Center, for the second time in five months, was the scene of a staff member alleged mishandling of a preschool student.
South Orange-Maplewood School District Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor, in a July 20 open letter, said that a Montrose paraprofessional has been put on administrative leave while an investigation on a July 18 mishandling allegation is being investigated.
That investigation is being done jointly by SOMSD, the South Orange Police Department and the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency’s Institution Abuse Investigation Unit. Taylor said he called the police and DCPP immediately after first calling the child’s parents July 18.
“We take all allegations of a child being mistreated very seriously,” said Taylor July 20. “If the allegations are substantiated, we will not hesitate to do what we need to do to protect your children.”
A Montrose teacher’s aide was accused of hanging an autistic boy by his legs for 15 seconds during March 27’s school dismissal. The unnamed aide, who was put on administrative leave, resigned from SOMSD in May.
Then-Montrose Principal Bonita Samuels took a leave of absence. The SOMSD Board of Education appointed Maureen Davenport as interim principal June 1.
BLOOMFIELD – NJTransit will soon more than make up for the lost decades in restoring the 1912 Bloomfield Station’s westbound waiting room on its Montclair-Boonton Line.
The NJTransit Board of Directors, at its July 12 meeting in Newark, approved allocating $4.7 million towards restoring and reopening the Lackawanna Plaza waiting room, which had been closed since the 1980s. The Town Centre station currently has an average daily ridership of 1,500 people.
The project, to start later this year, will complement the eastbound waiting room, which was restored and reopened in 2008 courtesy of a $1 million federal grant. The whole station, which is on the national and state historical registries, has been within Bloomfield’s Town Centre redevelopment zone since the 2000s.
Bloomfield, Madison and Lake Hopatcong stations were built in a Gothic style by the Lackawanna Railroad in the 1910s. Successor Erie-Lackawanna Railroad, in the face of Montclair Branch ridership declines in the 1960s, sold the westbound waiting room to glass installer-turned real estate owner Howard Haberman.
Haberman had rented out the space for a pizzeria and a florist shop before closing the room in 1980. When he presented a site plan to build a platform level restaurant to go with a reopened waiting room before the Bloomfield Planning Board in 2002, Mayor Raymond McCarthy and his administrators objected.
McCarthy, citing that the station is within the six block Town Centre redevelopment zone, said that the township has a say at what goes into the westbound waiting room. Haberman countered that the property sale had been honored by Conrail and NJTransit.
MONTCLAIR – The Township Council has scheduled Aug. 15 as its public hearing and possible final vote on legislation that would ban the use of internal combustion engine leaf blowers year round.
The measure, as passed 5-2 on its July 8 introduction, would amend its 2022 May 15-October 15 seasonal ban to year-round Oct. 15, 2023. The ban would affect both private owners and landscaping companies.
Mayor Sean Spillar and Council Members Robert “Bob” Russo, Peter Yacobellis, Robin Schlager and Lori Price Abrams said that the ordinance amendment would cut noise and chemical emissions made by the gas blowers and limit disruption of bees and other pollinators.
The full-time gas blower ban would prompt the use of quieter electric blowers. The legislation is endorsed by Quiet Montclair. Advocates point towards the Maplewood Township Committee’s Jan. 1, 2022 permanent ban as an example.
Deputy Mayor William “Bill” Hurlock and David Cummings, who voted “No,” said that there is no significant difference in the health effects of gas and electric blowers. They are concerned about the economic burden to be placed on small businesses who would have to switch to electric blowers to keep working in Montclair.
Although Gaia Gardens owner Diana Paxton said that it is using some battery powered tools, she added that it takes up to eight times longer to cover the same lawns with electric blowers. It takes four to five hours overnight to fully recharge the blowers’ batteries. In the end, Paxton concludes that she would have less time to serve her Montclair clients and would annul all Montclair contracts and autumn estimates.
GLEN RIDGE – Montclair Fire Department inspectors are searching for the cause of an early morning July 14 fire at an Appleton Place house while its contracted renovator is weighing whether the building is still worth overhauling.
The MFD blotter entry had its headquarters units respond to a house fire there at 6:40 a.m. that Friday. Montclair has been providing contracted fire suppression and prevention services for Glen Ridge since the borough disbanded its own department in 1990.
The incident commander promptly pulled a second alarm for all hands and mutual aid. Firefighters soon found that the house was vacant: residents had temporarily moved out and renovation personnel had not yet arrived for the day.
Units from Bloomfield, West Orange, East Orange and Clifton either went to the fire scene and/or provided Montclair station coverage.
Although the fire was quickly contained, the 2.5-story house was left with fire, smoke and water damage on all its floors. The final MFD fire engine left the scene at 9:50 a.m. There were no reported injuries.
BELLEVILLE – Township residents who remember July 21 as the anniversary of when a private plane broke up over Belleville, killing its pilot, may also remember how its death toll could have been a lot worse.
July 21, 1967 was an average hazy summer Friday with a low cloud ceiling until parts of a single engine Bonanza 240 rained down on Passaic Avenue and Liberty and Jefferson streets just after 12:30 p.m.
A wing of Bonanza N54420, still laden with aviation fuel, landed on the intersection of Liberty and Jefferson streets. The Bonanza’s fuselage landed just feet before Belleville High School’s principal’s office along Passaic Avenue. The building had dismissed its students and staff for the summer school day five minutes earlier.
The pilot’s body was found in a Passaic Avenue backyard pool across Passaic Street. The Casale family said that their children had just left the pool for lunch.
Two plumes of smoke, visible for several miles, drew all Belleville Fire Department hands and those from neighboring towns.
The pilot was identified as Thomas R. McCarthy, 67, of Rochester, N.Y. McCarthy, who owned a personnel company, was a World War Two navigator who was on his way home from South Carolina.
McCarthy and his Bonanza had taken off from a stop at Newark Airport. Contemporary articles state that the Bonanza struck an electrical high power transmission line, causing it to explode. McCarthy left behind a wife and five children.
NUTLEY – A Franklin Avenue dance studio and part of an Italian delicatessen appear to be continuing business as usual despite a July 8 police pursuit whose end came with a crash there.
A Nutley Police Department blotter entry has its officers responding to a car crash between 152 and 156 “South Franklin Ave.” that Saturday. They arrived to find a blue Subaru against a brick pillar between A&S Italian delicacies’ southern and the Angelic Dance Studios’ northern walls.
Responding officers promptly summoned local EMS, who took the Subaru driver to a local hospital for treatment of serious injuries. The car was extricated without major delay to NJTransit Route 74 buses or other traffic.
156 Franklin Ave. is a 2.5-story house that was long converted to street level offices or stores and second floor apartments. A&S, at 152 Franklin is another 2.5 story mixed-use building with a single story northern extension.
The crash is still under investigation since witnesses told NPD officers that a second car had been pursuing the Subaru. The second car’s driver, should he or she be found, will be charged with fourth-degree assault by auto.
