Sea Bright Fire Chief Chad Murphy looks at a mock vehicle accident just before his and two other volunteer departments started extrication drills last week. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Tragedy hit Middletown twice last week, with a man dying in a motorcycle crash and a family perishing in a six-alarm fire.
A roundup of all of last week’s news below.
On Sunday, a Franklin man was killed in a motorcycle accident. In Red Bank on Monday, two car accidents one block and one hour apart occurred on Spring Street in Red Bank; the first sent nine to the hospital. The second sent two away in an ambulance.
Then on Tuesday, an early-morning fire claimed the lives of four people on Statesir Place. Full coverage of the six-alarm blaze here, here and here.
In police news, Middletown made a number of arrests, including one of a man accused of waving a gun at another man. The Red Bank police blotter included a report of thieves stealing kitchen appliances from a home. The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office arrested a Rumson man for allegedly possessing child pornography on his computer.
The Red Bank Shade Tree Commission will be busy, as it plans to plant a couple hundred trees in the borough over the next five years.
We previewed a number of events last week, including a major fundraiser for the upcoming lights-in-the-sky display that is Kaboom! Fireworks on the Navesink; Harry Connick Jr’s visit to Red Bank; Billy Van Zandt’s “evening” in Middletown; and Al Pacino’s One Night Only at the Basie.
Sea Bright firefighters flipped over a bunch of cars on purpose. For training, of course. Then the mayor sharpened her focus on “slumlords,” one of them being a former mayor. In other Sea Bright news, the borough, we learned, is still paying a helluva lot more per head than any other town at the high school.
In Rumson, the DPW guys and their elbows have something to look forward to.
A Red Bank gas station, after five months of dormancy, turned its pumps back on. Other RB BIZ NEWZ in this spring’s first Retail Churn.
The week in pix: Red Bank Easter Egg Hunt, a dampness on the Navesink, dino-sized eggs on a Rumson lawn and this week’s Where Have I Seen This?
We featured Alex Rosen, a Little Silver college student who abhors comics, but draws them, to document his daily life.
We closed out the week on a rather crusty note, video-ing buskers on the street.
