TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The Newark Police Division, on Feb. 20, posted security camera photos of five men wanted for the Feb. 15 armed robbery of an 18th Avenue restaurant. They did not leave until they searched one victim’s pockets, stuck up a second and pistol whipped a third.
The five masked men, said Newark Public Safety Director Fritz Frage, entered Carlos Kitchen, 978 18th Ave., at 3:15 p.m. that Thursday. Each one was holding a handgun.
One of the fivesome put his gun to a victim’s head and forced him onto the floor. A second suspect then rifled through the victim’s pockets. A second victim was also held at gunpoint in the lobby.
A man first identified as an employee was struck in the head with a handgun by one of the suspects. That victim told a reporter that one of his assailants had asked for Carlos before ransacking the cash register.
The owner, Carlos Smith, said that the man hit on the head was his 72-year-old father. He had asked him to mind the store while he himself briefly stepped out. His father was taken to Newark’s University Hospital for treatment.
The fivesome were last seen fleeing west on 18th Avenue, with personal property and an undisclosed amount of cash taken.
NPD is asking for the public’s help in identifying the suspects. Their images have been posted on the division’s social media. Tips can be left with the Essex County Sheriff’s Crime Stoppers hotline and website.
IRVINGTON – Relatives of a township man have been making his funeral arrangements since Feb. 11 while authorities are looking for the person or persons who shot him and injured two others.
Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II and Irvington Public Safety Director Tracy Bowers said that the first township police units were alerted of gunshots being fired from the 200 block of Isabella Avenue at about 9:22 p.m. that Sunday.
They arrived to find Damian Thompson, 27, and a second man shot plus a third man “with a leg injury.” All three were rushed to University Hospital.
Although the man with the leg injury and the other shot man were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, Thompson had died by 11:14 p.m. There has been no information of Thompson’s last rites or his obituary posted as of Feb. 27.
Athletic Director Taylor Leaves Irvington
The Irvington Public Schools are hoping that the person who succeeds as its athletic director will be as durable and as accomplished as Dr. John Taylor. Taylor, who has been IHS AD from 2017 and helped the Irvington Blue Knights win its 2021-22 NJSIAA football championship, resigned Jan. 31. The Washington state native, as of press time, is finishing his first full month as AD for Burlington Township High School.
Taylor, who himself said that six predecessors went through IHS 2009-17, started the high school’s freshman girls volleyball and boys soccer teams, turned the co-ed bowling team into boys and girls bowling, boys and girls golf, varsity and JV boys volleyball, competitive cheerleading, girls wrestling and girls lacrosse.
EAST ORANGE / ORANGE – Public Service Electric & Gas is putting the finishing touches on its “New Lakeside Avenue Substation” – not at 375 Lakeside Ave. in Orange but .7 mile east at 101-55 North Park St., East Orange.
PSE&G will end a five-year process of getting permits for and constructing a substation on a 2.27-acre site between North Park Street and Kearney Street in East Orange’s Doddtown section once it puts it on their electrical grid. It is part of a system modernization and climate hardening effort that includes the Orange Valley/Orange Heights, Washington Avenue Belleville and Fairmount Heights Newark projects.
The work replaces the former Electro-O-Still/Culligan Water plant, part of the Erie Orange Branch right-of-way and a parking lot for the long-gone Orange Mattress Co. factory and showroom. The site is bordered by the culvertes confluence of Nisuane and Wigwam brooks at its southwest corner.
The state’s largest utility will deactivate the century-old Lakeside Avenue Substation at the northeast corner of Cleveland Street in Orange’s North Ward. PSE&G, in its 2021 Environmental Impact Statement to the East Orange Zoning Board, said that they found it more efficient to build an all-new substation instead of trying to upgrade the .89 acre station and warehouse.
De-energizing Lakeside Avenue Substation will be one more step in PSE&G’s leaving that Orange neighborhood. It had also owned three other industrial buildings bordered by Lakeside Avenue, High Street, the Erie Orange Branch right of way and Cleveland Street in its earlier Public Service era.
The four-story building at the corner of Lakeside and High used to be home of the Occupational Center of the Oranges into the 1990s. A garage at 291 Cleveland St., which had a railroad siding, was once the PER Water filter plant before its present use by the Unicorp electrical parts fabricator.
What will ultimately happen to the old substation and warehouse is an open question. It has been listed on the DEP State Historical Preservation Office’s register (ID #4892) since 2006.
WEST ORANGE – Municipal employees arriving for work at Town Hall before 8:30 a.m. Feb. 20 were greeted with a silent protest.
West Orange for Humanity members had left 144 pairs of shoes on 60 Main St.’s steps. Above the steps and blocking the front door was a sheet reading: “Complicit in Genocide. 144 Children Murdered in Gaza Every Day.”
The group, which was formed in October, is believed to have placed the shoes around 6 a.m. that Tuesday. A township spokesman said that the shoes and banner were removed by 8:30 a.m.
The 144 children killed per day is based on figures provided by the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health. The same ministry has recently stated that 10,000 of Gaza residents killed in the Hamas-Israel war, whose overall toll is nearing 30,000 by Feb. 27, are women and children.
West Orange Mayor Susan McCartney, whose Feb. 20 arrival time here is not known, issued a Feb. 21 statement.
“I unequivocally condemn all expressions of hate, including abhorrent comments this type of behavior incited during the last council meeting,” said Mayor McCartney. “We respect and can empathize with all individuals in the community affected by the ongoing, devastating destruction – but we cannot govern with any sense of changing the trajectory and outcome of these issues.
McCartney was referring to the Feb. 13 Zoom-only Township Council meeting which was peppered with anonymously called antisemitic and racist remarks and insults. The catcalls prompted the council to table their deliberation on whether to issue a resolution urging an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire.
The council, from at least the Feb. 27 meeting, will only allow in-person comments from the public.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Columbia High School administrators had scheduled a review of its safety and security [procedures with the rest of its community here Feb. 26 in the wake of two Shelter-in-Place Code Yellows called on Feb. 23.
Both incidents involved reports of non-CHS students either planning to enter the Columbia campus or already on the property. The second one said that the visitors would be carrying weapons.
Acting South Orange-Maplewood Superintendent of Schools Dr. Kevin Gilbert and Acting CHS Principal Ann Bodnar said that school administrators heard rumors of students “from another school” intending to arrive at 10:29 a.m.
CHS Main Office staff immediately notified the Maplewood Police Department and ordered a Code Yellow. The sheltering-in-place keeps people from entering or leaving the premises until the police had conducted a building search.
MPD officers searched the building and checked the video surveillance recordings for unauthorized visitors. Teachers gave an “all accounted for” roll call of their class period students. Police, not finding any trespassers, gave the “all clear” at 11:57 a.m.
Normal instruction resumed – until a second rumor surfaced after lunch period. This word was of non-Columbia students in the building, that more may be coming and that a weapon may be on campus.
Cone Yellow was implemented and MPD swept the building – again. Police granted permission to dismiss class at the usual time. At no time were any weapons found.
BLOOMFIELD – Authorities’ search for the vehicle and its driver that stuck a township man while walking his dog Jan. 10 beyond his Jan. 22 death and memorial services for Feb. 10.
Tim Hughes, 51, said an ECPO release, was struck while walking his dog in Eagle Rock Reservation Jan. 10. The release did not state where in the 400-acre reservation – West Orange, Montclair or Verna he was hit.
Hughes endured two surgeries but succumbed from his injuries Jan. 22. The Stoke-on-Trent native emigrated to the US in 1998 and was a computer science officer when the SCUBA diving bug bit him.
Hughes and his business partner founded Gotham Divers equipment and training store in Manhattan. He met his wife Monika when she started shopping there in 2010. The couple moved to Bloomfield to start a family.
Described as an inimitable and quick-witted person, Hughes is also survived by his parents, a brother and two daughters. Celebrations of his life were held in New York Feb. 3 and in England Feb. 10. A GoFundMe.com page to help his wife and children, as of Feb. 27, is nearing its $100,000 goal.
MONTCLAIR – Motorists using Upper Mountain Avenue be forewarned: the speed limit will soon be lowered to 25 mph between Jerome Place and the Little Falls/Passaic County border.
The Essex County Board of Commissioners, at their Feb. 21 meeting, adopted a resolution dropping the speed limit along that 300-foot stretch of the avenue. Upper Mountain Avenue is also known as County Route 620 where Montclair township cannot lower the limit on its own.
The resolution amending CR 620’s speed limit was sponsored by Commission President Brendan Gill, of Montclair. Gill is on Montclair’s Vision Zero Task Force and on the NJ Bike Walk Coalition.
He had turned a willing ear to Mayor Sean Spillar and township officials, who have been asking to slow traffic on Upper Mountain Avenue and other Essex County road “hot zones” within Montclair the past year.
Montclair bolstered its case, at least with Upper Mountain Avenue, by having its traffic engineer bring CR 620’s crash histories and speed recordings to county attention.
Councilman Robert Russo thanked Gill, the Commission and County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo for the change. The longtime elder and former mayor said that he has been on a “25 to Stay Alive” campaign for all Montclair streets the past year.
GLEN RIDGE – The fruit of the Glen Ridge Public Library’s patience may be paying off with some renovations over the winter – but not at the printer/photocopier.
Printer and photocopier charges, said Library Director Tina Marie Doody here Feb. 27, are going up March 1. An 8.5 by 11-inch black and white page will go from 10 cents to 20 Friday and color copies will go from 25 cents to 50 per page.
The basic 10 cent photocopy or printer page, at least in the Local Talk area, has gone the way of the $1 cheese pizza slice. Doody explained that the new charges are in line with those of other libraries and helps the service to pay for itself.
“We will have parity with other libraries,” Doody said that Tuesday. “We’ll be charging as much as Bloomfield but not as much as Montclair.”
The library is down the home stretch of the NJ State Library Bond-funded renovations that began in October. Patrons may already use a second restroom and a bottle-friendly water dispenser, for example, and some third-floor study rooms soon. The work is funded by a library construction bond grant issued in 2019 and awarded in 2022.
“We applied both times in 2021 and 2022 and were put on a waitlist in ’22,” said the director. “We were awarded in December 2022. and the construction contracts went out in October. We’re waiting for the furniture for the study rooms to come in.”
BELLEVILLE – What started out as a religious procession along Washington Avenue here Feb. 21 became social media speculation over “migrants’ arrival in town.”
Mayor Michael Melham said he started getting calls from people saying that Wednesday that Belleville had become a destination by “Mexican migrants.” They had been dropped off by a bus and they were walking along the avenue with a Belleville police escort.
Members from St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Parish said that 85 of their members, mostly parish women, were making a walk to honor the “Pope John XXIII Movement.” Pope John XXIII (1881-1963), who was canonized as a saint in 2014, is best known for convening the Second Vatican Council, which allowed the Mass to be said in local languages, in 1959.
“It’s easier to ask, ‘What’s going on?’ instead of jumping to conclusions,” said Melham, who recalled other walks about Belleville. “I’m grateful for people who reached out directly to inquire. I’m also thankful to the women and St. Peter’s Parish for their prayers.”
The mayor has learned that St. Peter’s men will be holding a similar walk in March. The neighboring Nutley Clergy Fellowship is planning “The Nutley Cross-Walk,” from Nutley High School, Noon Good Friday March 29.
NUTLEY – Neighbors around Milton Avenue are hoping that the New Jersey Highway Authority will make a lasting tribute to hit-and-run victim Winston Perlaza by maintaining its Garden State Parkway overpass.
Those who converged at the corner of Milton and Linn Road Feb. 14-15, where Perlaza, 22, of Paterson, and a fellow companion were felled by a fleeing driver, found that none of the overpass’ walkways were shoveled or salted from a recent snowstorm.
Neighborhood residents had recently asked for shoveling and sanding of the Nutley Board of Commissioners. The Commissioners, however, said that the overpass’ upkeep is part of the highway authority’s responsibility.
Perlaza, who was born Feb. 19, 2001, was remembered at his Feb. 24 funeral in Passaic as an ambitious young man with an infectious smile. “Bebe” had turned down older brother Erik Ferrer’s offer to move with him to West Virginia because he had just landed a mechanic job at Little Falls’ Rt. 46 Chrysler Jeep Dodge. He wanted to run a repair garage of his own.
Mother Ana, older brother Ferrer and older sister Natalie are among the Wayne native’s survivors. His Nutley girlfriend was presumably with him Feb. 14 and was treated for her injuries. A Lumberton man has been arrested for leaving the scene of a fatal accident and motor vehicle-related charges.
