TOWN WATCH
NEWARK / ORANGE – A man known for being present in and around Newark Penn Station, and who has a relative in Orange, was arrested by Newark police Oct. 19 and taken back to New York City by U.S. Marshals.
NPD arrested Sabir Jones, 39, at the request of the NYPD in relation to an Oct. 18 New York City Transit Authority Subway incident where a 30-year-old woman was pushed off the platform at the Fifth Avenue – West 53rd Street Station onto the railroad tracks around Noon that Wednesday.
Eyewitnesses gave a description of the pusher and added that the suspect was seen “having a disturbing conversation with himself” moments before pushing the victim unprovoked onto the path of a departing southbound E train – causing the victim to hit the train with her head before falling onto the tracks.
The victim was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital in critical condition from the head injuries. The suspect was also seen in the same station on surveillance cameras yelling at a 26-year-old man, a student from Queens, before slugging him and breaking his jaw. NYCTA E and F train service was disrupted that afternoon by the field investigation.
Authorities said that they had arrested Jones near one of Newark Penn’s PATH platforms. They were tipped off by a citizen who recognized him and called 911.
Police, said ECPO spokesman Robert Florida, said that Jones has had run-ins with the law for two decades. His prior arrests and charges ranged from panhandling to joyriding, weapons and drug possession and sexual assault.
Older brother Malik Jones, 45, of Orange, said that Sabir suffers from mental illness but is “all right when he’s taking his medication.”
IRVINGTON – Members of the Mountainside Police and Union County Prosecutor’s Office, armed with an arrest warrant, placed a township man into their custody within days of an Oct. 3 alleged officer dragging incident at that borough.
MPD Off. Nicholas Hussey said he had pulled over a Hyundai Sonata 1pm that Tuesday on Route 22 by Glenside Avenue. The Sonata did not have a front license plate and for a malfunctioning brake light. Off. Breanden Carlos joined as backup.
Hussey said that the Hyundai driver could not produce a driver’s license, “gave conflicting information on his identity” and re-entered his car without police permission. Off. Carlos tried to restrain the driver but he drove away “at a high rate of speed” – dragging Carlos 50 feet and getting his right foot run over.
Hussey radioed what information he had of the Hyundai and the driver and called for an ambulance for Carlos. Carlos was treated at and released from Summit’s Overlook Hospital
Mountainside Police detectives – with the help from colleagues in UCPO, Springfield Police and the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office – identified the Sonata driver as James McMillion, 38, and issued an arrest warrant.
McMillion has been charged with aggravated assault of a police officer, eluding, having a malfunctioning brake light, missing a front c\license plate and related charges.
EAST ORANGE – Boston Market, unless it successfully files an appeal in State Superior Court-Civil Part, appears to have struck out here at 471 Central Ave.
“Local Talk” discovered an eviction order, signed at 9 a.m., on the restaurant’s front door at 11 a.m. Oct. 30. Sunrise Equities, of Golden, CO. had filed an eviction for the lack of paying rent the last two months. Although the interior lights were on and furniture in place, the menu sign board had been taken down, food was not on display and the parking lot’s employee spaces remained vacant.
The restaurant, like 27 of its 31 in New Jersey, were closed by the state Department of Labor on Aug. 15. They stayed closed until its Boston Chicken of NJ subdivision had paid $2.554 million of back wages to its 314 employees and penalties in full 53 days later.
A “Local Talk” delivery crew found all but its drive-through window open on Oct. 12; the managers said they had been otherwise open for business since Oct. 11. The crew returned on Oct. 19 – and found a City of East Orange “order to close” sticker on its front door; it had run afoul of the city’s Health Department.
The crew, at 3 p.m. Oct. 26, found the sticker removed – but the front door locked.
Sunshine Equities is the real estate arm of Boston Market Corp. and owns the franchise’s physical plant. It had similarly closed restaurants in Howell and Toms River over rent arrears.
The .7725-acre restaurant at Central and South Clinton Street started out as a Gino’s Hamburgers/KFC before it was bought by Sunshine/BM in 1986.
WEST ORANGE – “The Inconvenience is Temporary – The Improvement is Permanent” sign that used to border the 1960s construction site of Interstate 280 may well apply to the change over of the West Orange Public Library’s interim place here at 80 Main St to its new address at 10 Rooney Circle since Oct. 28.
Oct 28, according to township announcements, was when 80 Main St closed so library staff could move its holdings to the remodeled 10 Rooney Circle by the Essex Green Shopping Plaza. The former headquarters of Ryder-Lincoln Technical Institute and Beatrice Foods have been repurposed for a library and a DPW garage thanks to $6.196 million financed in part by a 2017 State Library Construction Bond fund. (WOPL was awarded in 2021-22.)
10 Rooney’s opening as the new WOPL, however, has been postponed from Nov. 1. No reason or a new date has been revealed as of press time.
That reopening has been set back originally from July in part because of supply chain issues holding up HVAC equipment and other items to be installed. 10 Rooney, when open, will replace the 1959 library building at 46 Mt. Pleasant Ave. for a more central location.
Patrons are being asked to return materials and for other services at adjacent BCCLS sister libraries, including South Orange, Maplewood, Montclair, Livingston and Millburn. Details are found at BCCLS.org. (Orange is under Essex County’s ReBEL interlibrary system.)
SOUTH ORANGE – A 19-year-old village resident was arrested and charged with DWI Oct. 24 by Fairfield, Conn. police as the result of a collision that left him, an Uber driver and four of his fellow Sacred Heart University students injured there Sept.29.
Tyler Delk, said FPD Lt. Edward Nook, has been charged with DWI after his breath test result registered 10 times the legal BAC limit, which is .02 percent for those 21 and older in Connecticut. He was also charged with speeding for going 85 mph, reckless driving and five counts each of assault with a motor vehicle and reckless endangerment.
Delk was driving a 2018 black Audi S5 convertible that was going east on Jefferson Street at 85 mph when he hit a curb near Park Avenue at about Midnight Sept. 29. He lost control from that impact.
The Audi was sent into westbound Jefferson – and into the part of a 2021 white Toyota Corolla being driven by an Uber driver and carrying five women who are SHU students – that was turning onto Jefferson from Park.
Their collision overturned the Audi and left all five people injured. While the other five were treated for their injuries and released by Oct. 16, Delk was admitted to nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital with critical injuries.
Delk was charged with the above counts and posted a $250,000 court-set bond while still in St. Vincent’s. The Seton Hall Prep 2022 graduate has a GoFundMe.com page established for his medical expenses – but not for his defense.
MAPLEWOOD – “Local Talk” had a ringside seat to QuickChek Corp.’s closing of its 51-year-old store here at 1545 Springfield Ave. since Oct. 20. The future of the property on the corner of Springfield and Boyden avenues, as of press time, remains as much a mystery as its swift closing.
One “Local Talk” staffer, on Oct. 19, got a tip off from QC corporate in his QuickChek app that Thursday. He received a “Thank you for your patronage” message and a one-day offer for free coffee. The message did not say why this particular store was being shuttered.
Another “Local Talk” member passed by the southeastern corner store Oct. 23 and found rubber cones blocking the parking lot apron. Looking past the handwritten “Closed” sign on the front door, one saw the shelves stripped bare, most signage removed and the soda machines’ blinking red “empty” lights. Trucks from corporate or, like Advanced Demolition, came and went the following week to remove kitchen equipment or fill up two 30-cubic-foot dumpsters.
The standalone QC No. 18 was built in 1972 like others mostly found in Union County. The convenience store held 3,864 square feet on a .179-acre lot. While the Whitehouse Station headquartered company stayed within New Jersey, it had replaced some of those 1970s-vintage stores with larger ones that doubled as service stations or sold them off to independents.
QC 18 did get competition from the 7-Eleven at 1712 Springfield since 2011 – but Wawa’s building one of its own convenience/gas stations at 1511 Springfield a block east in 2016-17 may have been the game changer. The 5,600 sq. ft. store and filling station stood on a 1.577 acre lot where a plumbing supply store and a gym stood.
QC Corporate has not said why they closed Store No. 18. They had a store on Raymond Plaza, 516-44 Raymond Blvd., Newark from its 2005 opening until closing in 2021. It had closed its 501 Washington Ave., Belleville store last summer in anticipation of opening a newer store and station off Main and Stephens streets, where the old School No. 1 stood, by this year’s end.
Those still wanting a fresh QC sandwich or coffee are directed by the corporate website to more modern stores in Bloomfield or Montclair – or stores in adjacent Union, Harrison, Kearny or Clifton outside of “Local Talk” Land.
BLOOMFIELD – A Flower cross has been taped around the traffic light on the southwest corner of Bloomfield Avenue and Grove Street since Oct. 21 in memory of Ampere resident and traffic accident victim Nelly Fernandez Malo.
Malo, 60, died of her injuries after a collision with a motor vehicle at that corner Oct. 20.
Born Jan. 19, 1963, Malo was given her last rites Oct. 26-27. Her visitation was held that Thursday at Newark’s La Funeraria Villa Americas. Her Funeral Mass was held at St. Xavier Roman Catholic church, followed by burial at North Arlington’s Holy Cross Cemetery that Friday.
Malo’s passing was mourned by relatives and friends here and in her native Ecuador. Daughter Mayra, on Oct. 24, said that she knows of five traffic deaths at that intersection and appealed to mayor Michael Venezia for the crossing’s correction.
No charges had been charged by the ECPO, nor by the Bloomfield Police Department, against the motorist – who had stayed at the scene.
MONTCLAIR / GLEN RIDGE – Authorities here and with ECPO have not revealed the name of the 85-year-old woman who suffered a traffic accident in Upper Montclair Oct. 28 and had died the same day at Mountainside Hospital.
Montclair police were called to the intersection of Bellevue Avenue and Park Street at about 10 a.m. Saturday. They found the pedestrian and a motor vehicle with its driver inside.
MPD called for units from the township fire department and local EMS, who took the victim to Glen Ridge’s Hackensack University Meridian Mountainside Medical Center. The patient was declared dead there by 1 p.m.
The unidentified motorist, who stayed at the scene, has cooperated with police and, later, ECPO’s Accident Investigation Unit. The driver, as of press time, has not been charged.
The incident happened about a block east of the Buzz Aldrin Middle School; no school activity was affected.
BELLEVILLE – What some locals and television fans call “The Sopranos Funeral Home” here at 274-78 Washington Ave. may have taken one step closer to change, or oblivion, by a Township Council vote here Oct. 24.
The Township Council Tuesday night had approved Resolution 273-2023, which designated Premier Developers, LLC, of Englewood Cliffs, as redeveloper “of certain properties of the Township.”
At-Large Councilman Thomas Graziano and Third Ward Councilman Vincent Cozzarelli understandably abstained for different reasons. The latter abstained because a former family property would be affected; the former in an act of consciousness.
The passed resolution gives Premier the green light to come up with plans for the former Cozzarelli-Irvine Funeral Home for Belleville’s Council and Planning Board to consider. The home, which was used as a location set for HBO’s “The Sopranos,” has been closed since 2022. The council received a recommendation from Daugherty Planning & Development where 274-78 Washington, its driveway and the house behind it at 163 Valley Street become ” a non- condemnable area in need of redevelopment, Feb. 8.
Premier was the developer of the Essex apartment building, the nearly complete five-story, 158 unit structure that rose from a former used car parking lot at 102 Washington.
Premier had thrown “A Better Belleville 2022” campaign fundraising cocktail party for Mayor Michael Melham, Graziano and Deputy Mayor Naomy DePena. Graziano and Cozzarelli had abstained from a Sept. 27, 2022 vote that awarded Daugherty the AINOR study.
