TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Former Newark police officer Jovanny Crespo, after an 11-month wait, was sentenced by New Jersey Superior Court Judge-Newark Michael J. Ravin here May 31 to serve 27 years in a state prison.
Ravin’s sentencing of Crespo came nearly a year after a jury found him, on June 26, 2023, guilty of aggravated manslaughter, aggravated assault and official misconduct. The jury, after a 10-week trial, convicted him guilty of killing Gregory Griffin, 46, and severely injuring Andrew J. Dixon, 45, both of Newark, Jan. 28, 2019.
Crespo shot Griffin and Dixon multiple times before 45 Irvine Turner Blvd. at 11:30 p.m. The shooting came at the end of their fleeing a traffic stop at Clinton Avenue and Thomas Street. Crespo, who did not initiate the stop, joined in the pursuit and shot at the fleeing car four times.
Ravin, after deducting 300 days for time already served, said, “Contrary to the defendant’s claims, this case wasn’t about police policy. This was a case of a police officer who chased down two fleeing suspects and gunned them down.”
New Jersey State Police Benevolent Association President Peter Andreyev, on June 3, countered Ravin’s sentencing remarks: “Judges are meant to be respected by the public, and using their significant influence on the public to paint every man and woman serving and protecting our streets and neighborhoods with the same brush is a tremendous abuse of that responsibility.”
Crespo’s bodycam footage on Jan. 28, 2019 is publicly available.
IRVINGTON – There is a reason why the Irvington High School girls varsity flag football team did not make the Super Football Conference’s May 15 playoffs, despite sporting a 7-0 win-loss season record – until May 10.
SFC Girls Flag Football Director Tom Mullahany, on May 14, announced that its executive committee denied an appeal made by team head coach Kyle Steele and IHS Athletic Director Troy Bowers. An SFC investigation claimed that the IHS Blue Knights had used two “ineligible players” in three of their regular season games.
The SFC committee’s denial means that IHS has had to forfeit three of its home games: against East Orange April 17, Ramapo April 26 and Nutley May 2 – all SEC opponents. Their now-4-3 record precluded the Blue Knights from a potential second championship season in three years.
Irvington had won the 2022 state championship but, after a nine-game winning streak, lost to No. 1 rated Ridgewood in May 31, 2023’s semifinal. The Blue Knights have won over 30 regular season games, some by double-digit blanking of their rivals.
Girls flag football, formed in 2021, remains a club sport – which explains it is governed by the SFC and not the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. Flag football team players, due their scheduling are allowed to play in other high school spring sports.
Coach Steele has taken comfort in that the Blue Knights took first place in the second annual Nike Football Kickoff Classic in Beaverton, Ore. against squads from California, Illinois and Nevada.
EAST ORANGE – City police detectives are investigating the circumstances of an injurious shooting the evening of May 31.
Officers were summoned to 272 Lincoln St. 9 p.m. Friday on a gunfire report. They arrived to find an individual with bullet wounds to one of his or her legs.
The victim was taken to University Hospital for treatment. Witnesses told officers that they saw someone fleeing the scene.
Rail Station Upgrade
Brick Church Station will be more than restoring the 103-year-old structure’s grandeur thanks to $83.3 million awarded by the Federal Transit Administration here May 28.
The NJTransit Morris & Essex Line major stop will get its low-level platforms elevated and two new elevators installed. It is presumed that the handicap accessible elevators will be installed in the existing but long-unused freight shafts. Fully elevating the platforms will speed passenger boarding and disembarkation, joining Newark Broad Street and Morristown in the process.
There will be other handicapped and general public amenities made as part of the FTA’s All Stations Accessibilities Program, although no construction timetable has been projected. The award comes while the $500 million The Crossing at Brick Church residential/retail project continues.
ORANGE – What will happen to 543 Stetson St., known lately as the Stetson Lounge & Grill, has remained an open question since the March 14 death of one of its latest owners, Gaetano “Tommy” Carrubba.
Carrubba, 88, who lived above the Valley section corner bar until 2004, had died at Browns Mills Deborah Heart and Lung Hospital. The Newark native apparently bought the former Milan’s tavern of the 1960s and Eugene Guzzo’s Gene’s Tavern of 1950 in the 1980s.
Carrubba changed the name to honor the former Stetson hat factory – as a contemporary auto body shop and an auto repair place nearby. Given that bars and taverns had reopened after Prohibition’s repeal in 1933, it may not have been around when the hat factories were.
Directories and real estate records showed that Tommy had sold the bar at South Jefferson Street to two of his sons, Gaetano, Jr. and Michael, in 2004 and retired to Toms River.
Although the lounge has been closed in the last few years, it has been a stop on several walking tours. Its facade stones, according to one source, came from the Hudson River during the mid-1920s Holland Tunnel boring. Another source claimed that the address was the birthplace of John Stetson.
Sons Brian Carrubba and Ricky Matos, brother Salvatore Carrubba, daughters Donna Gould, Linda-Carrubba-Hamilton, Carole Lynn Carrubba and Kim Ann Langdon; several grandchildren and great-grandchildren are among his survivors.
Carrubba’s graveside service was held at Toms River’s Ocean County Memorial Park March 23. Memorial donations may be made to St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital, stjude.org.
WEST ORANGE – Several residents, including a recently hired school crossing guard, gave some St. Mark’s Square safety food for Township Council thought at the latter’s May 21 meeting.
The T-intersection of Valley Road, Main Street and Northfield Avenue are at the center of St. Mark’s Square and public speakers’ concerns. They are also known as Essex County Roads 508, 508S and 508 Spur.
The newly-minted crossing guard said that there should be signs posted noting the guards and cameras installed to deter careless driving and enhance guard and pedestrian safety.
Another resident suggested that an additional stop light be installed on Valley Road south of the intersection. She noted that “Cars are coming from Orange and Northfield…emerging from different points.”
Council President Rev. William “Bill” Rutherford more than took notes. Rutherford said that he will add the intersection to a list of West Orange streets that are in the county’s roads and bridges division. He said that Township Engineer Zayibeth Caraballo and Councilwoman Asmeret Ghebremichael, who heads the Pedestrian Safety Advisory Board, will be consulted.
SOUTH ORANGE – Those who pass by the repurposed Village Hall, which began life in 1896 as the village fire station, may want to silently thank the late John R. Overall, Jr.
Overall, 77, founded the South Orange Historical and Preservation Society, lobbied the Village Trustees in the 2010s to keep and find a new use for Village Hall. The trustees supervised its restoration and awarded a lease to its current restaurant tenant.
Overall, a self-employed antiques dealer, advocated other historic sites in the village and conducted walking tours until his recent retirement to Newark’s Vailsburg section. He died on March 28 – exactly a month after his 77th birthday.
The Manhattan-born Overall first came to South Orange for the record stores’ vintage vinyl discs. He fell in love with the village’s history and set up his antiques shop. The Vanderbilt University graduate, as one of his last works, oversaw a 90-square-foot “South Orange Before & After” exhibit in the newly-built Taylor-Vose apartment building’s top floor art gallery.
Overall’s visitation and prayer service here at the Preston Funeral Home and internment in East Orange’s Holy Sepulchre Cemetery were held April 10. Condolences may be posted at prestonfuneralhome.net.
MAPLEWOOD – Township police detectives are investigating a Friday night shooting on a Newark Heights street of an Irvington man.
MPD officers said they had responded to Jacoby and Brown streets to an 11:30 p.m. gunfire report. They found a 24-year-old Irvingtonian lying by the intersection with gunshot wounds to one of his legs.
Officers and arriving South Essex Fire Department EMS medics treated the victim on the scene and transported him to a local hospital. He was admitted in stable condition.
Irvington Mother Traffic Victim
The ECPO Traffic Accident Unit has taken over the investigation of a May 13 pedestrian-motor vehicle accident on Springfield Avenue that killed an Irvington mother of two. A makeshift shrine to Maris Delores Ganzhi Zhao, 28, remains at the westbound curb of the avenue’s cub, yards west of the Irvington border.
ECPO Chief Assistant Prosecutor Thomas S. Fennelly said that Zhao was struck by a vehicle at about 9:10 a.m. that Monday and that the driver had stayed at the scene. Traffic, including NJTransit buses using the Hilton Garage, were affected during the field investigation.
Zhao’s funeral was held in her native Ecuador, where she was born on Nov. 6, 1995. A GoFundMe page has been set up for her two seven-year-old and nine-month-old daughters.
BLOOMFIELD – Several Bloomfield Fire Department units came to the Garden State Parkway June 1 to put out a car fire in its southbound lanes south of its Watchung Avenue Exit 151 interchange.
A State Police spokesman from the Bloomfield Barracks said that BFD units were called after they had received reports of a Nissan catching fire beneath the nearby pedestrian overpass at 5 p.m. Saturday. State Troopers were dispatched to close the right shoulder and two right hand lanes.
Township firefighters extinguished the blaze and the Nissan was towed away by 6:15 p.m. puts out car fire SB bet ped overpass and Exit 151 5-6:15 p.m. Although no injuries were reported, the State Police is looking for the blaze’s cause.
Wigwam Brook Contamination
Bloomfield police officers and firefighters closed northbound Prospect Street alongside Watsessing Park overnight June 2-3. They were called to a report of a substance in Wigwam Brook flowing through the county park at 11:30 p.m.
The first units who found the substance, called Nutley HazMat and the Essex County Sheriff’s Office for assistance. Mayor Ted Gamble arrived in time to see Nutley HazMat deploy containment booms.
It is hoped that most of the substance had been collected before the book joins Toney’s Brook to create The Second River. The search for the substance’s source, which may be upstream in The Oranges, continues.
MONTCLAIR – The 2020s here in the Montclair Public Schools’ Administration office, thanks to a new three-year contract, may become the decade of Superintendent of Schools Jonathan Ponds’ administration.
The Montclair Board of Education approved a new five-year at their May 20 meeting. It is more than an extension of the 2020 contract that was made on Ponds’ arrival.
The superintendent’s new contract is to take effect July 1, 2025 and run through June 30, 2029. He will then be earning at lease $231,000 annually with three percent yearly increases plus a $1,000 professional development stipend.
Ponds’ current pact has him earning $222,854 per year plus annual two percent increases.
Ponds’ tenure is a marked contract prior to 2020. Montclair Public Schools had five named, acting or interim superintendents 2012-20.
Montclair’s board passed with five members present May 20. Crystal Hopkins had resigned the week before. Absent were Yvonne Bouknight, Eric Scherzer and Katheryn Weller-Demming.
BELLEVILLE – “We want Tom Agosta back!” was the cry filling Belleville Town Hall’s Council Chamber from an overflow crowd of parents and residents at their May 28 meeting.
Township citizens were asking their elders why Agosta was swiftly dismissed as Recreation and Cultural Affairs Director May 24. The crowd milled the chamber gallery and spilled out into its hallway in Town Hall’s Public Safety Annex.
They brought a printout of an online petition, up to 1,000 signatures that Tuesday night, calling for the longtime director’s reinstatement. Their lead statement was:
“Tom was always for the Kids. We present this petition in the hopes of overturning this preposterous decision by the people responsible.”
The audience was also outraged that the reasoning for Agosta’s firing had not been forthcoming from Belleville officials.
Mayor Michael Melham said that Agosta’s dismissal was at the sole discretion of Town Manager Anthony Iacono. Iacono, like most municipal managers and business administrators. as day-to-day CEO, makes personnel decisions.
NUTLEY – John V. Kelly III was sworn in as Nutley’s latest and youngest mayor at the Board of Commissioners’ reorganization meeting.
Kelly’s fellow four commissioners approved outgoing Mayor Dr. Joseph Scarpelli’s resolution approving his successor. His appointment was made minutes after he, Scarpelli and the other three incumbent commissioners were sworn into their new terms.
Nutley and Maplewood have municipal commissioners or township committee members select a mayor from among themselves.
A majority of Nutley voters made Kelly as top vote-getter in the May 14 nonpartisan municipal election. The commissioner candidate with the most votes generally becomes Nutley’s mayor.
Kelly, 39, edged the late Frank Oreichio, who was 45 when he was elected, as Nutley’s youngest mayor. The township native is also the grandson of former mayor and longtime state assemblyman John Kelly, Sr.
