TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Relatives, friends and classmates of Andrew Osei-Frimpog are making his funeral arrangements while authorities are investigating the circumstances of his March 8 death here at the YM/YWCA.
Uncommon Schools said that its North Star Academy Lincoln Park High School was open March 10 only for its community members to talk with counselors 10 a.m. – 9 p.m. A GoFundMe.com page has raised over $20,000 towards his memorial as of 10 a.m. March 11.
Newark Public Safety Director Eugene Miranda said that firefighters, followed by an EMS unit, went to the YM/YWCA at 600 Broad St. on a report of an ill person at 2:48 p.m. Saturday.
They found “an unresponsive male” on “The Y’s” second floor basketball court. Witnesses said that he was playing in a game when he suddenly collapsed.
EMS medics rushed the boy to University Hospital – where he was declared dead from “a cardiac event” at 4:13 p.m. It was Uncommon Schools North Star who identified the deceased as Osei-Frimpog.
Osei-Frimpog, said North Star Academy Lincoln Park High School, was a North Star Knights boys basketball, volleyball and soccer player there and for its Lincoln Park Middle and Washington Park middle schools. The aspiring collegiate computer science major was among LPMS’s inaugural incoming class in 2019. (North Star’s Lincoln Park building at 377 Washington St. opened as a high and an elementary school in August 2016.)
Relatives said that Osei-Frimpog had been planning for an immersive summer in Italy.
IRVINGTON – Federal prosecutors may not only want to put a township man in prison but, pending how his case unfolds in a U.S. judge’s Newark court room, may want to keep him in prison for life.
Michael Weaver, 38, according to a U.S. Department of Justice-New Jersey District release, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Newark Feb. 28. His arraignment date before U.S District Judge Claire C. Cecchi has not been scheduled as of press time.
The federal grand jury returned a bill of indictment on Weaver on the counts of possession of fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine with intent to distribute, possessing a firearm while drug trafficking and being a felon in possession of a weapon. How that last charge is adjudicated may determine whether he will be behind bars for the rest of his life.
U.S. attorneys are applying the Armed Career Criminal Act on Weaver because of his past felony convictions in Essex County. Those prior crimes include aggravated assault, drug trafficking, robbery and unlawful weapons possession charges.
The ACCA imposes a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and up to life in prison. Federal attorneys have not disclosed the circumstances of Weaver’s arrest as of press time.
EAST ORANGE – A city woman was among five people who the Newark Public Safety Police Division had apprehended for as many shooting incidents that happened there between Jan. 6 and 24.
Monasha I. Lang, 32, said Newark Public Safety Director Eugene Miranda March 5, was arrested for a Jan. 10 incident in his city. Lang has been charged for aggravated assault, controlled dangerous drug trafficking, robbery and unlawful weapons possession.
The circumstances of Lang’s Jan. 10 incident and of her subsequent arrest were not disclosed by Miranda – nor of the other four people named in the March 5 release. It is not known if Marc A. Greene, 33, or Roselle Park, who was charged on the same counts, was involved in the same or a separate incident.
Satira A. Jenkins, 32, of Newark, was arrested Jan. 6 and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful possession of a weapon. Luis J. Centeno Cruz, 50, of Newark was arrested Jan. 7 for unlawful possession of a weapon.
Justin A. Gonzalez, 24, of Newark, was arrested Jan. 24 for unlawful possession of a weapon.
ORANGE – The City of Orange Township is to hold the first of two community meetings regarding its five-year Urban Enterprise Zone plan 7-9 p.m. March 19 at the City Hall Council Chamber.
Attendees will be asked to fill out a survey in English or Spanish about what they would like to see in the 132–block UEZ between now and 2030. The area, going by city zoning blocks, largely spans Main Street between the East and West Orange borders, Scotland Road from Main Street to the South Orange border, part of Central Avenue into the Orange Valley, Interstate 280 and NJTransit railroad rights of way and parts of Washington Avenue, Thomas Boulevard, North and South Jefferson streets, High Street, Lakeside Avenue, Alden Street and “infill” blocks.
Orange joined Newark, Irvington and East Orange in creating state recognized UEZs. The zones, created in 1983, seek to “stimulate growth in urban communities.” The city’s UEZ Coordinator collaborates with local businesses and the state’s economic development agency, the department of labor and the redevelopment authority.
Orange and other UEZs may be best known for the 3.125 percent, or half-off, sales tax rate, micro businesses loans, tax-free credits for zone businesses who make up to $100,000 in equipment purchases, facility upgrades and expansions and the Facade Improvement Program.
Orange, in 2022, received $388,500 from the state towards the Military Park renovation project between Main Street and South Main Street. That work was completed in July 2023. The city also received $204,208.38 to hire six part-time employees to maintain the UEZ.
The city has scheduled a second in-person meeting here April 15. It has published handbills with QC codes for English and Spanish surveys; those codes are good until March 31. Five year plan surveys and other zone questions may go to UEZ Coordinator Christopher Mobley, (973) 952-6070 and/or cmobley@orangenj.gov.
WEST ORANGE – A cloud of uncertainty has descended on what has been the Americana Diner here on 270 Main St. now that it had served its last meal at 7 a.m. March 3.
Americana’s owners posted on Downtown West Orange Alliance’s Facebook page March 1 that it will close that Monday morning, ending 81 years of near continuous service at that address since 1934. The Manno-built diner’s windows were boarded up by Noon; a Facebook poster asked if the plywood would at least be painted green for March 8’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
270 Main, in its Americana era, was only intentionally closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas evenings. The address’ latest owners replaced the West Orange Diner & Pancake House name in 2014. The Diner’s owners bought the place from Tory Corner Diner’s last owners in 1984.
Tory Corner Diner’s Charles Colombaris and family, of West Orange and Jersey City, bought C. W. Leadbeater’s self-named restaurant there in 1960. Leadbeater, of the township, owned and operated his eatery there since 1934.
The diner was more assembled than built in 1961, thanks to Manno, of Farfield’s modular construction. Down to its last pancake platter March 3, it had retained its stainless steel sidings and “TCS” inlaid on the foyer’s terrazzo floor.
The Tory Corner Diner was a go-to place by neighbors and visitors from the nearby Thomas A. Edison National Historic Site. Edison’s last son, Theodore, would walk from his Edisonia Terrace home to have the diner’s lentil soup.
It is not known whether the Manno diner will be bought and shipped elsewhere, given the real estate demand for authentic diners. Orange’s Orange Circle Diner had been reportedly sent to West Palm Beach, Fla. in 1998. Belleville’s Short Stop, a 1949 Paramount, found a private Upstate New York home in 2018 after first arriving in Diversified Diners Cleveland lot in 1991.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – New Jersey American Water’s absorption of the Village of South Orange Water Department and its infrastructure, with two pen strokes March 6, has begun. The private utility, pending New Jersey Board of Public Utilities’ approval, is to be consummated during 2025’s latter half.
NJAW President Mark McDonough and Mayor Sheena Collum, by signing ownership transfer papers that Thursday, started the integration of an over century old municipal department with the state’s largest water provider and operator. The village, where a majority of its participating voters approved the sale referendum on the Nov. 5 General Election ballot, is selling its department for $19.7 million.
The utility will make a $50 million renovation of the village’s water assets over the next 10 years while minimizing water customer rate increases the next five years. NJAW has pledged to keep rates as-in the first two years and have three percent annual increases the next three years.
NJAW will implement its village renovation list, starting with the replacement of any and all lead service lines with galvanized steel lines now through 2031. Other projects include: modernizing the Main Reservoir and Newstead Watersphere, replacing the Crest Drive Standpipe and replacing all fire hydrants and four-inch-diameter water mains.
Person of Interest Sought
Township detectives have been looking for “a person of interest” since March 2 regarding gunfire surrounding Boyden and Elmwood avenues.
A Maplewood Police Department release said that officers had responded to calls of shots fired at that intersection at about 7:10 p.m. that Sunday. Although they found no injured persons, MPD detectives found four or five shell casings at the intersection – including a bullet lodged into one of the apartments along Elmwood.
Interviewing witnesses there resulted in a description of the “person of interest” but the MPD Detective Bureau has not publicly released that depiction. Anyone with information is to contact Detective William Isetts at wisetts@maplewoodnj.gov or (973) 761-7925.
BLOOMFIELD – The quiet of Rowe Street at the Norfolk Southern Railroad right-of-way was broken by a single car accident with a fire here Feb. 26.
Bloomfield Fire Department Engine 1, Truck 1 and Car 30’s crews went to the street’s north end during that Wednesday morning’s predawn hours. They found a car who had gone off the street and slammed its driver’s side against a utility pole.
The two-door car’s engine bay had caught fire, igniting the wooden pole and nearby brush. (The two block street’s front lawns were covered with snow.)
The blaze was quickly extinguished and the car towed away. There were no reported injuries. The car had rested on a pole on what used to be the NJTransit Boonton Line and Erie Railroad Greenwood Lake Division’s right of way.
Passenger service, including the 1955 Rowe Street station stop, ended when the NJTransit combined the Boonton Line and Montclair Branch in Montclair Oct. 20-22, 2002. What is now “The Lower Boonton Line” is slated to become the Essex-Hudson Greenway (rail) Trail in 2026-7.
NS Police, since Feb. 24, has been enforcing a No Parking ban on or “too close to” the unused right of way here and in Belleville. They have been issuing warning tickets and having no parking signs erected along the way; ticketing and towing may be forthcoming.
MONTCLAIR – A Montclair Public Schools official, a second driver and a seven-year-old boy may have recovered from injuries they had received in a Feb. 25 intersection accident here.
A Montclair Police spokesman said that MPS School Business Administrator Christina Hunt was taken to Paterson’s St. Joseph Medical Center after a collision with another car at Claremont Avenue and Valley Rd. at about 4:33 p.m. that Tuesday. Hunt, who was driving a Porsche Panamera, was treated for a head bruise.
Responding Emergency Medical Service technicians also examined two people in the Mazda SUV at the scene That driver, a 27-year-old woman from Montclair, had her hand pain looked at.
The seven-year-old boy passenger in the Mazda was treated at the scene for “a small abrasion to his left eye socket.” Neither Mazda occupant were taken to a hospital.
MPD officers were told by two witnesses that the Mazda was turning left from Valley onto Claremont during an amber caution light. They said that the Porsche “accelerated” before the light would change – but struck the Mazda’s right front corner with its own right front.
Officers who conducted the preliminary investigation, said that no summonses were issued. Both vehicles required towing.
BELLEVILLE – A township man, who had pleaded guilty in a Jan. 6 Morristown court room regarding a fatal May 31 Morris County car crash, has been paying his debt to society in a state prison since Feb. 14.
State Superior Court-Morristown Judge Robert Hanna had sentenced Gerald Veneziano, 41, to at least 85 percent of six years’ imprisonment under the No Early Release Act Veneziano is to also pay $8,961 as restitution to the late Jacob Davis’ family.
Veneziano had pleaded guilty Jan. 6 to DWI and second-degree reckless vehicular homicide. He had been driving a 2021 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck north along Roxbury’s Howard Boulevard when he collided with a southbound 2019 Mazda 3 driven by Davis, 19, of Flanders, 10:30 p.m. May 31.
Davis was declared dead at the scene. Veneziano had to be extricated from his truck and was taken to the Morristown Medical Center for treatment of serious internal injuries.
It was while Veneziano was being cut out of his Silverado that first responders had noticed “numerous empty alcohol containers” by where the truck had settled. He later failed an alcohol test and was found to have clocked at 90 mph before the collision.
NUTLEY – Township, as of Feb. 19, has filed an appeal to the New Jersey Appellate Court regarding the Feb. 4 State Superior Court ruling on Prism Capital Partners’ plan to build a warehouse – or a truck terminal.
Township elders and administrators are looking to have the Superior Court-Newark judge’s ruling that went against them reversed. Prism has put up a “Coming Soon” sign of a 147.000 square foot, 40- dock, 136-parking space structure here at 24 Kingsland St. The 11-acre site, where a Roche Pharmaceutical building once stood, is across from Cathedral Avenue.
What Prism, the prime redeveloper of the Roche/ON3 property, and NutClif Master LLC calls a warehouse is what township law calls a truck terminal, which is barred from Nutley’s zoning map, is at issue.
Nutley’s ordinance calls a property where “more than three 1.5-ton vehicles whose gross vehicle weight each is 6,001 and 10,000 lbs. parked overnight” a truck terminal. That statute prompted the Nutley Planning Board to reject Prism NutClif’s 2020 application and a zoning officer to deny it a permit in 2021.
The Superior Court judge, calling the ordinance “arbitrary and capricious,” struck that down Feb. 4.
“The project must now be considered by the Planning Board as a result of the Court’s ruling,” said Mayor John V. Kelly IV. “While a hearing date on the application has not yet been established, I anticipate that our residents will attend the hearing and express their opinions regarding what the developer calls a ‘warehouse’ at that site. It will create a traffic and environmental nightmare for the town and the neighborhood.”
Nutley and Clifton had named Prism/NutClif LLC as the redeveloper of the 114-acre Roche site.
