TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – An NJ Superior Court Judge handed Newark Public Schools a setback Aug. 1 in its bid to reclaim to of its former school buildings it had sold in 2017.
Superior Court Chancery Division Judge Lisa M. Adubato, ruled that Tuesday that NPS could not add the testimony of a real estate expert in their plaintiff brief against the Newark Housing Authority, and the new owners of 33 Maple Ave. and 15 State St. to its body of evidence.
Attorney Brendan McCarthy, on plaintiff client NPS’ behalf, asked Judge Abubato to overturn Judge James R. Paginelli’s May 24 ruling to bar expert testimony from Christine Kurtz.
Kurtz’s testimony included her conclusion that the respective buyers of 15 State St. and 33 Maple Ave. from the NHA – The Hanini Group and Friends of Team Charter School should have done “more due diligence” with “the facility and development agreement.”
That agreement, from NPS via NHA, includes a provision that the state’s largest school district could reclaim the buildings NPS State Superintendent of Schools Chris Cerf, in 2017 conveyed deeds off 13 school buildings to the NHA, who would then seek buyers.
Hanini first bound the Maple Avenue School for conversion to apartments but later sold it to Team Charter Schools. The former “Newark Colored School” at 15 State St. was to become a new home for the Newark Boys Chorus and an NPS museum before that too entered private hands.
Judge Adubato upheld Pagenelli’s ruling, saying that Kurtz’s conclusions did not meet the court’s standards for expert testimony. NPS, since 2020, has spent about $1.2 million in trying to reclaim 15 State and 33 Maple Ave. through the courts.
IRVINGTON – It is presumed that the five families among the 22 people displaced by a July 30 house fire here have found more permanent housing.
The Irvington Fire Department blotter states that its first units were responding to a fire in a 19th Avenue house, off Grove Street, at 4:10 p.m. that Sunday.
Firefighters found all 22 people had self-evacuated from the active fire. The incident commander, while deploying firefighters to combat the blaze, called upon the Irvington Fire Department and the local American Red Cross chapter for assistance.
IPD officers cordoned off the firefighting scene. It is not clear whether NJTransit bus service on its No. 90 route was affected. The Red Cross meanwhile found emergency housing, clothing and food for the newly homeless.
The 19th Street house, however, was extensively damaged. Township code inspectors have condemned the remaining structure. for demolition.
Township and ECPO arson investigators, deployed to the scene as a standard operating procedure, They, at last word, were searching for the fire’s cause.
EAST ORANGE – County Homicide Unit detectives have continued their search for Nicholas N. Edwards’ killer past his July 21 funeral at Orange’s Woody Home for Services.
Edwards, 18, had died here at CareWell Health Medical Center 8:05 p.m. July 3. Edwards’ friends had brought him there at 6:55 p.m. They told emergency ward doctors and EOPD officers that they were following his Mercedes along Ashland Avenue when someone in a third car shot him.
Nicholas Nathaniel Edwards was born Aug. 21, 20 04 to Marlene and Damian Edwards, Nicholas was an East Orange School District student, having been promoted from the Dionne Warwick Elementary and Patrick Healy Middle schools to East Orange Campus High School.
Edwards had been accepted by Wayne’s William Paterson University when he graduated with the EOCHS Class of 2023 June 21. The 13-day high school graduate, who had worked several jobs, wanted to be a dentist.
Brothers Sean and Matthew, sister Alyssa and three grandparents are also among his survivors.
Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura has kept out on his CrimeStoppers website a $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Edwards’ killer.
ORANGE – The .146-acre lot on Scotland Road’s east side between Waverly Place and Conover Terrace will remain, at least for a season, a vacant lot.
The Orange Planning Board, at its July 26 meeting, almost unanimously denied 492 Conover Terrace LLC’s site plan application to build new housing on the lot. The Englewood-based LLC had filed an application before the OPB’s May 24 meeting, to build housing there.
492 CT LLC had bought the lot for $130,000 on July 30, 2021 – 18 days after its incorporation. Details of what it had wanted to build there – and the board’s reason for denial – were not immediately available.
Locals have noticed that a 10-foot-tall chain link fence went up on the hillside grass lot in May. The LLC, as of Aug. 3, has left it there. It had been a wooded lot until its clearing in 1975.
The lot is on the west end on a block of a row of mostly 2.5 story houses built around 1900 It is across NJTransit’s M&E Highland Avenue Station and may be within the Transit Development and Central Orange Redevelopment zones.
492 CT LLC, after the board’s July 26 denial with one abstention, said it will return with an amended application.
WEST ORANGE / NUTLEY – Nutley police officers had confirmed to their West Orange colleagues Aug. 1 that the same vehicle stolen from the former township was implicated in several car burglaries or attempted in the latter.
NPD officers had put out a bulletin on the car that was reported as stolen earlier that Tuesday.
The car’s owner told Nutley detectives that her car was taken from her driveway. She said that the car was locked – she had a spare key – and that the vehicle “was filled with gifts for a baby shower.”
The West Orange Police dispatcher began fielding calls from residents about attempted car thefts about an hour later. WOPD officers were promptly sent out to the scenes.
Witness accounts and surveillance recordings noticed the same car the suspects used in arriving at or departing from allegedly targeted vehicles. An area bulletin check matched that car to the one taken from Nutley.
SOUTH ORANGE – South Orange Police Department Det. Lt. Brian McGuire, going by the department’s press release date, has been in retirement for at least six weeks.
McGuire, according to the release, ended his 25 years’ service on June 30. Several village and county officials and law enforcers had gathered with McGuire and his family for an in-headquarters luncheon, remarks and an end of shift clap out, retires.
McGuire became one of “South Orange’s bravest” in 1998. He had been promoted to Detective by 2011 and promoted to Det. Lieutenant by 2018.
Along the way, McGuire was a member of South Orange FOP Local No. 12 and the Police Superior Officers Association Local No. 12A. He and Det. Michael Bradley were honored with 2011 Outstanding Merit Awards for their apprehending armed robbers the year before.
Village Trustee Summer Jones (on Village President Sheena Collum’s behalf), Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin, current and retired police chiefs Ernesto Morales and James Chelel and Cesar Morales of the Essex County Sheriff’s Office paid tribute to and helped send off McGuire.
MAPLEWOOD – A former township resident’s seven-year fight to keep her house has ended with a July 28 plea bargain in Superior Court-Newark.
Eva Morawski, 61, has been sentenced to probation, community service and counseling that Friday in exchange for pleading guilty to an arson count. She, since Jan. 14, had been facing up to 10 years imprisonment for arson and for breaking into 60 Maplewood Ave. 7 a.m. Dec. 7, 2022.
Morawski was returning from a hospital visit when she found the locks on her 2.5-story home changed. She was under a 72-hour psychiatric evaluation when locksmiths and “junk removers” acting on behalf of Effect Lake LLC, of McLean, Va., came in.
Morawski, who had lived there since 1960, was behind on her property taxes when Maplewood held a tax certificate/tax lien auction in 2016. Effect Lake outbid others with its $92,800 premium on top of paying $12,500 in back taxes and interest.
A train of misfortunes and missed opportunities then began, through the 2019 foreclosure start, into Dec. 7, 2022. Effect Lake, going by postmarks, had sent warning and action notices weeks after the said dates. Morawski had not taken advice from friends and lawyers to short sell.
A Gofundme.com page, set up by a friend, garnered $8,000 into Dec. 19. Morawski, since her parents’ 2010 death, won the house in a three-year title deed fight with her sister.
Morawski, said Maplewood Police, the South Essex Fire Department and the ECPO, left a “To Who it Be Concerned” note, set fire to the house in four places and, on a couch stabbed herself in the chest. SEFD officers, with assistance from Irvington, East Orange and Union, found her within 30 minutes.
The Maplewood Seniors Advisory Committee and the Township Committee, on Feb. 21, had discussed what can be done to prevent a similar tragedy. A bill, giving relatives of those in tax lien status or nearing foreclosure could bid for the house, is making its way through the State Legislature.
BLOOMFIELD – What started out as officers’ observing an altercation in progress along Bloomfield Avenue turned into the arrest of an East Orange man.
Two Bloomfield Police Department officers said that they were patrolling the avenue when they noticed one man pushing another down to the ground by 240 Bloomfield Ave. that Thursday.
The BFD duo promptly separated the pair and began separate interviews. The victim said that the other had approached him from behind and snatched his iPhone. The two were struggling when police arrived.
The victim lodged a complaint on the suspect, identified as Almustafa Mosley, 32, of East Orange Mosley was arrested, taken to Bloomfield Police Headquarters and was released with a municipal court date.
240 Bloomfield Ave. is part of the Aldi-anchored shopping plaza. It had been the site of a manufacturing plant for Tung-Sol and Hartz Mountain.
MONTCLAIR – Township officials have gone into mourning since learning, on Aug. 6 that the interim Town Manager they had hired on July 18 has died.
Funeral arrangements are being made at press time for Joseph Hartnett, 75, who died at the Jersey Shore weekend summer house he and wife Georgia share. The Township Council had hired Hartnett for $1 a week while they search for, ultimately, a permanent town manager.
Montclair had first hired Hartnett as Town Manager October 31, 2003 – Jan. 1, 2010. He was also tapped by the Supreme Court of New Jersey Chief Justice Stuart Rabner to conduct the 2014-15 dissolution of the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation.
Hartnett, between assignments, was Executive Managing Director of Government Strategy Group, which provides administrative consulting and staffing services for governments.
Hartnett, in his latest and last stint, approved the promotion of 13 Montclair firefighters Aug. 1. The promotion, based on a controversial 2019 examination process, remains the subject of discrimination and labor practice lawsuits.
The Township Council, in an Aug. 7 emergency meeting, immediately hired Michael Lapolla. They had intended to have Lapolla succeed Hartnett Aug. 14.
BELLEVILLE – The township motorist at the center of a 5:30 p.m. June 7, 2021 collision that killed another resident, a 13-year-old dirt bike rider, took a plea bargain July 25 that will involve imprisonment and deportation.
Exactly when Marylin J. Quisepe Falcon will be returned to Peru will be spelled out by Superior Court Judge Ronald D. Wigler in a September sentencing hearing. Falcon, 36, may likely serve a “flat” three-year sentence before being sent out.
Quisepe-Falcon, before Wigler’s Newark bench July 25, had pleaded guilty to knowingly leaving the scene of an accident that caused a death. She then confessed to striking the Yamaha dirt bike that Victor Huaringa-Alvez was riding with her Ford Explorer SUV at Joralemon Street and Garden Avenue – and leaving the scene.
Huaringa-Alvez, despite efforts of township first responders and local hospital staff, died 45 minutes later. He was a Belleville Middle School seventh grade student. His mother and about seven other family members were in Wigler’s courtroom July 25.
Quisepe-Falcon had been facing a second-degree charge of leaving the scene of a fatal accident plus third-degree counts each of being an unlicensed driver involved in a deadly accident and endangering an injured victim.
Quisepe-Falcon, on one hand, turned herself into authorities June 17, 2022. It was discovered during her July 25 session, however, that she had entered the U.S. illegally as an undocumented person.
