TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Two schools were locked down late Dec. 5 while Newark Police directives investigated a shooting that left a woman injured.
The first NPD officer had responded to the intersection of Sussex Avenue and Norfolk Street on a gunfire report there at 3:20 p.m. that Tuesday. Officers found a woman with a gunshot to her leg.
The victim and witnesses said that three males had drawn guns and began firing multiple times before they had fled. Several shell casings were found at the scene.
The woman, who was taken to a local hospital, suffered non-life-threatening injury and is expected to fully recover.
Officers asked the main offices of KIPP: Lab High School, 29 Norfolk St., and the Marion P. Thomas Charter School, 125 Sussex Ave., to lock themselves and their buildings down while they searched for the shooters and conducted their field investigation. Traffic, including buses on NJTransit’s No. 99 route, were temporarily detoured.
The gun firing males remain at large.
IRVINGTON – Morris County authorities said that they had an Irvington woman extradited from Middlebury, Fla. Nov. 2 to the Morris County Jail in connection with an Oct. 18 armed robbery and assault at a Roxbury motel.
Morris County Prosecutor Robert G. Carroll, Morris County Sheriff James Gannon and Roxbury Police Chief Dean Adone said, on Dec. 5, that they have Auraceli A. Maldonodo, 24, in custody. They said she was one half of a couple who robbed and shot a man on the Roxbury Motel Oct. 18.
Adone said that his officers were called to the motel at Route 46 and 10 Ledgewood Circle at 8:54 p.m. They met a 36-year-old man with a severe gunshot wound to one of his legs and performed lifesaving first aid.
The victim was admitted to a local hospital for the serious but non-life-threatening injury. The man said he was expecting to meet someone on the lot when a Honda Accord with New York license plates pulled up.
A man and a woman got out of the car – the latter holding “an AR-style rifle.” The pair started to rob him, a struggle ensued, and the victim was shot in the leg. Motel video footage identified the New York Honda; Maldonado was linked to the car after an East Hanover camera spotted the easterly Accord on Route 10.
Maldonado has been charged and is being held on first-degree armed robbery and second degree aggravated assault and possessing a weapon for an unlawful purpose. She is to have a pre-trial hearing Jan. 9.
The male in the robbery and assault remains at large. Information may be sent to the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office: (973) 285-6200.
EAST ORANGE – An autopsy is being conducted on the body of a city man who was found dead here in Watsessing Park Dec. 7.
The Essex County Sheriff’s Office said its patrol officers were told of a body found in Wigwam Brook near Dodd Street at 5:38 p.m. that Thursday. County Sheriff’s officers patrol Watsessing Park’s 69 acres in East Orange and Bloomfield like they do in other Essex County Parks.
Wigwam Brook, whose headwaters is in West Orange, flows through Orange’s North Ward and East Orange’s Doddtown and Franklin sections before joining Tony’s Brook in Bloomfield’s part of the park. It becomes The Second River, which continues east through Bloomfield and Belleville before its confluence with the Passaic River.
The body was identified as Frank Vergilio, 68. The State Regional Medical Office, before taking his body to its Newark morgue for autopsy, declared him dead at the scene at 7:24 p.m.
ECPO Homicide and Major Crimes Task Force Detectives did not say at the time whether foul play was involved.
ORANGE – The late civil servant and entrepreneur Maxie McRimmon was eulogized here at Woody’s Home for Services Dec. 6 as not being “a perfect man but a good man.”
McRimmon, 90, had died here Nov. 26. Born Maxie Andrew McRimmon here Aug. 7, 1933, he had lived here all his life except for his studies at West Virginia State College and his hitch with the U.S. Army.
The Orange High School Class of 1951 graduate also graduated from WVSC in 1955 before serving Uncle Sam. Lt. McRimmon returned to Orange in 1963 and joined the city government as a 23-year Zoning Officer before retiring.
The one time city construction code officer was also appointed at different times to the Orange Board of Education, Orange Housing Authority and Orange Alcohol beverage Control Board.
McRimmon started and ran McRimmon Associates Tax Preparation from 192 Reynolds Terr. and McRimmon & Son Mason Contractors.
Wife Otris Smith McRimmmon, sons Martin and Philip, daughter Pamela, nine grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren are among his survivors. Daughter Maxine and sister Etta had predeceased him.
WEST ORANGE – County authorities have not released the names of the two men who were killed when their utility truck plunged into the Rahway River East Branch here Nov. 28.
Township fire and police crews were dispatched to the culvert north of Northfield Avenue at about 8:17 a.m. that Tuesday. They found a small utility truck from Universal Electric Motor Service, of Hackensack, had fallen head on into the riverbed.
West Orange police officers promptly closed Northfield between Hutton and Rollinson streets for what would be all day. NJTransit’s No. 73 buses were among the detoured traffic.
Police also called for the ECPO Accident Investigation Unit. Township firefighters called for Nutley Hazmat and for a contracted heavy duty tow truck.
It is not known when the truck’s driver and passenger were declared dead at the scene. An initial investigation has the truck traveling west on Northfield losing control and cutting across 95-99 Northfield’s parking lot before crashing through a wooden boundary fence. Some authorities believe that the driver may have had a medical emergency.
There is no mention of the mishap or of the lost employees on Universal’s Website or Facebook page.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – A South Essex Fire Department engine crew had a busy Nov. 22 morning, beginning with helping pump out water from Boyden Avenue Elementary School’s basement.
The engine crew made the near instantaneous trip from their station at 249 Boyden Ave. to the school at 274 Boyden upon a South Orange-Maplewood School District maintenance worker’s 7 a.m. call.
The employee directed the crew to the basement’s boiler room. The worker, who had just checked in that morning, found that water runoff from the overnight heavy rain had collected to where it was reaching the room’s electrical wiring.
Firefighters and the employee called PSE&E at 7:15 a.m. to cut power to the school building. Acting SOMSD Superintendent of Schools Kevin Gilbert, for the lack of heat and lighting, ordered the Boyden School closed for the day at 7:20 a.m.
The fire engine crew helped pump out water until an SOMSD Facilities Department-contracted plumbing company arrived and took over the plumbing. The Boyden School reopened for normal classes Nov. 27, thanks to the holiday period work done by Troller Electric, Aramark Custodial Services, United Welding and Plumbing and Kelin Heating and Air Conditioning.
The same engine crew later joined colleagues from Irvington, Newark and Orange in responding to an alarm call from Irvington Housing Authority’s Camptown Gardens tower at 624 Nye Ave., Irvington. Although no evacuation was called, the cause of the alarm call and mutual aid has not been stated.
NOTE: The Maplewood Police Department is looking for the person or persons who scrawled graffiti on banners planted on the front lawn of Cong. Beth Ephraim. A worker discovered the vandalism at 113 Parker Ave. at 6:15 a.m. Dec. 8 and called MPD.
BLOOMFIELD – A dog is still alive thanks in part to swift action by first responders from four municipal agencies here at Brookdale Gardens apartment complex Nov. 19.
Firefighters from Bloomfield’s Brookdale Fire Station responded to a building fire call from 935 Broad St at about 9 a.m. They found heavy smoke coming out from one of the two-story brick garden apartment buildings set back from the avenue. Its residents had self-evacuated and were accounted for – except for a dog.
The incident commander directed his firefighters to search for the dog while they knocked down the fire. The commander called for mutual aid; Bloomfield Volunteer Fire Rescue 1, Bloomfield police, Belleville and Nutley fire and EMS from Bloomfield and Glen Ridge responded.
BFD Fire Chief Louis Venezia said that firefighters found the canine in a second floor apartment. They brought it outside and, with a pet mask, administered oxygen. The dog was then taken to an emergency vet, where it is recovering.
Although fire damage was quickly contained to the affected building, neighboring apartments suffered some smoke damage. The cause is being investigated by BFD.
Brookdale Gardens, built in 1950, is a series of two-story buildings holding 459 apartments.
MONTCLAIR – Montclair may have been unique in “Local Talk” land for allowing their part-time colleges to be enrolled for full-time health benefits – but a Dec. 4 report has the township not unique statewide.
Readers may recall that Montclair CFO Padmajo Rao had inquired with then-Town Manager Timothy Stafford in 2021 on whether its mayors and council members elected after the township joined the State Health Benefits Program in 2017.
SHBP, since its 2010 creation, allows elected officials to join the program so long as the said officials work at least 35 hours a week. Municipalities were providing up to $35,000 coverage for an official’s family or, should an individual decline, get a check for up to $5,000. They cannot come aboard SHBP if their job descriptions make them part-time or volunteer.
Rao alerted Stafford that eight of Montclair’s elected officers either accepted payments in lieu of declining to join SHBP or for signing on – even though they were or are part-timers. SHBP, she calculated, had paid $454,000 in benefits since 2017.
The overall $454,000 went out to former and current mayors Robert Jackson and Sean Spiller, former councilmen Peter Yacobellis and Richard McMahon and current councilors Lori Price Abrams, David Cummings, William Hurlock and Robin Schlager. (Spiller was later elected NJEA teachers union president as his full-time day job.)
The report found Montclair and 11 other New Jersey municipalities (out of 564 compiled by the N.J. Department of Community Affairs) forking over $3.2 million since 2014 to 32 current or former officials. Montclair is second to Clark, which paid almost $550,000 last year. Avalon, Long Beach, Roxbury, Elizabeth, Bridgewater, Roselle, Old Bridge, Ship Bottom, Maple Shade and Deptford (at under $25,000) rounded out the list.
Rao’s alter led to a harassment suit in October 2022 against Stafford over her whistleblowing. The Township Council fired Stafford in April. Her case is being processed in State Superior Court-Newark.
GLEN RIDGE – Former borough councilwoman Carolyn Ferguson, after a Jan. 6 memorial service, will join her beloved husband Bruce here in the Glen Ridge Congregational Church’s Garden of Memory.
Carolyn Ferguson, 78, who was councilwoman 1998-2003, lost her lengthy health battle Nov. 15. Born Carolyn House Feb. 9, 1945 in Vandalia, Ill., Ferguson and her husband moved to the borough in 1979, and her own retirement from CBS News in 1984, to raise daughters Alissya Phillips and Blythe Emigholz.
Carolyn was involved in her daughters’ activities, including leading the local Girl Scout troop to GRCC youth groups. She joined the Glen Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Squad, rising to the rank of Captain. The one-time Glen Ridge Police Commissioner became a one-term councilwoman and launched a borough-oriented newspaper.
Carolyn House came to New York City with a B.A. in English from the University of Illinois in 1967 to start her journalism career. She worked through the ranks and through several glass ceilings to become Executive Producer of “CBS Morning News,” working with the likes of Dan rather, Diane sawyer and Charles Osgood.
House and Bruce Ferguson at a company softball game in 1970 and married in 1971. B. Ferguson, who was production supervisor of “The Evening News with Walter Cronkite,” switched to cable; CNN, The Bravo Network and DG Systems. He too was a Borough Councilman 1992-97 and on the Glen Ridge Board of Education 1981-84.
Six grandchildren and sister Carla Johnston are among her survivors. Bruce died in 2013 after a 13-year battle against mantle cell lymphoma. Memorial donations may be made to the Glen Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Squad, 195 Ridgewood Ave., www.grvas.org/donate and/or Stand Up To Cancer, File 1224, 1801 W. Olympic Blvd. Pasadena, Calif. 91199-1224.
UPDATE: Hackensack Meridian’s Mountainside Hospital, as of Dec. 4, has been welcoming all incoming ambulances. It and Ardent Health Services, however, are still recovering from the Nov. 23 ransomware attack.
BELLEVILLE – Motorists and pedestrians who use the intersection of Greylock Parkway and Nolton Street may have noticed that the crossroads have become a four-way stop sign intersection since Dec. 5.
The Belleville Police Department had posted photos of what the township’s public works department had installed on its own Facebook page that Tuesday.
“This is now a four-way stop intersection,” said a BPD announcement. Please be cautious and aware when approaching this intersection and come to a complete stop.”
Should one encounter more than one stopped vehicle in that intersection, state MVC law requires that the first vehicle yield to the other vehicle on one’s right hand side.
BPD, also on Dec. 5, announced that parking meters along Washington Avenue are suspended for holiday shopping Dec. 11-Jan. 1. Township-wide alternate street parking has been suspended “until Spring.”
NUTLEY – Township residents who want to ask questions or have a say about a proposed senior citizens apartment building that would go up on the former Diamond Springs Restaurant and Beach Club property will get an online chance with the Nutley Planning Board Dec. 18.
Diamond Spring Real Estate Investment LLC, of Florham Park, started its preliminary and final site plan application for 35 Evergreen Ave. before the planning board Dec. 6. They had filed their plans Nov. 14.
DSREI wants to build 85 housing units on Block 7400’s Lost 1 and 17. The 85 include 75 two bedroom units and 10 one-bedroom units. All but three units are for people at least 55-years-old; three will not be age-restricted.
The LLC, on Dec. 6, said they were asking for zoning variations on curb cuts and elevator shaft height. The swim club, which has been closed since 2017, had been the focus by township elders as a redevelopment site in 2021.
35 Evergreen used to be Le Terrace swim club run by Patrick and Rae Nardone until 2003. Pat Nardone sold the club and, in 2004, paid a $1 million discrimination suit filed by the ACLU-NJ for a Bloomfield family from an incident in June 2002.
