By JOHN T. WARD
A Fair Haven girl is recovering from injuries sustained when she was struck by a car while crossing River Road Friday night, police said Monday.
The 16-year-old victim, who was not identified, was taken to Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune for treatment after the accident, which occurred at about 8 p.m. at the intersection of Maple Avenue, said Detective Jesse Dykstra.
Not that we condone it, of course, but the venerable tradition of Mischief Night appears to have been honored on Rumson Place in Little Silver Sunday night. (Click to enlarge)
The crime reports below were provided by the Red Bank Police Department for the period of October 21 to October 28, 2011. This information is unedited.
Criminal Mischief occurring at West Street on 10-22-11. Unknown person(s) spray painted a road sign with graffiti. Ptl. Robert Campanella.
Theft occurring on 10-22-11 at Riverview Plaza. Victim reported that his cell phone was stolen described as a Motorola Droid Pro by unknown person(s). Sgt. Michael Furlong.
Recent activity reports, unedited, as provided by the Middletown Township Police Department.
On October 26, 2011 Detective Kelly Godley and Detective Daniel Sullivan arrested John Lachawiec, age 23, from Edgemore Drive in Belford, NJ, for Burglary and Theft as a result of an investigation into burglaries that occurred at residences on Hillside Avenue and Delta Court.
Police say Lachawiec was charged after police located evidence at the scene linking him to the burglaries. He is being held at the Monmouth County Correctional Facility in Freehold, NJ, on $35,000.00 bail with no 10% option set by Judge Richard Thompson.
After six months of intense fighting in Afghanistan, Lance Corporal Brian Dilger of the U.S. Marines was welcomed home on leave in Little Silver Sunday.
The 22-year-old Red Bank Catholic grad was treated to an impromptu fire-and-first aider’s parade through town led by the Warriors Watch Riders, who drove up from Camden County for the occasion.
“I’m pretty embarrassed, but it’s definitely awesome to be back,” Dilger told redbankgreen, seen above right with his sister, Grace. (Click to enlarge)
Autumn colors on display at Fair Haven Fields on Ridge Road Sunday, with no hint of the fury of the day before. (Click to enlarge)
What a weekend, huh?
Near-freezing temperatures, sideways rain, snow, slush, then… brilliant sunshine, as though a switch was thrown.
Saturday’s “freak northeaster” dumped up to 19 inches of snow elsewhere in New Jersey, but spared the The Green its icy wrath. Then, on Sunday, hardly a cloud in the sky.
The National Weather Service forecasts a mostly sunny Monday with a high of 55 degrees or so.
Here’s the outlook for Monday night at the rest of the week:
The River Plaza section of Middletown was the scene of what appears to be a spree of break-ins by a suspect who stole a resident’s car early Thursday and is still on the loose.
A reader sent redbankgreen this account Thursday evening. We’ve removed the house numbers:
Last night at 3:30 am a resident surprised a burglar in his house at XX Hubbard Ave. He scared the intruder off and called the police.
Then a house 4 doors down the street was visited and stuff was stolen on the back porch. The burglar then went to our neighbors at XX Hubbard Ave. The car and house keys were stolen and the back door on the porch was propped open.
For the fifth time in recent weeks, members of Carpenters Local 254 in Edison picketed a Pennsylvania-based concrete contractor on the Atrium at Navesink Harbor addition job in Red Bank Friday over what they said is a failure to pay area wages. The picket was peaceful, though police issued summonses a week ago over an alleged spitting incident.
A plan to convert the Colony House failed, leading to a return to rentals, and new-tenant complaints about jacked-up rents. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Following a pattern reported on by redbankgreen back in June, the owner of the Colony House apartments has continued to illegally raise rents on tenants, some of whom may be afraid to pursue legal recourse, members of the Red Bank Rent Leveling Board said Thursday.
At their monthly meeting in a nearly empty council chambers, board members said that about eight residents had filed formal complaints in recent months alleging that the landlord, Park Ridge LLC of Lakewood, had rescinded incentive discounts given to new tenants since 2009, and then imposed cost-of-living improvements on the new base rent.
Only the cost-of-living adjustments are permitted under the borough rent ordinance, said board attorney Gene Anthony.
“We had three complaints in September alone,” said board chairman Vincent Light.
Two tenants and two reporters turned out for Thursday night’s monthly meeting of the Red Bank rent board. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
No landlords appeared from the cold rain outside, and only two tenants showed up, one of them to discuss an unrelated matter. Four members of the eight-member board were absent.
But paltry attendance wasn’t the reason Red Bank’s Rent Leveling Board didn’t get far with its review of the borough rent ordinance, which links annual increases to the Consumer Price Index, the nation’s go-to gauge of inflation.
No one on the board knew why the law, which dates to 1978, was structured to permit rent increases of 60 percent of the CPI rise when a tenant pays for heat, and 80 percent when the landlord does.
“I’m on the board 20 years, and I’m not sure of the reason for it,” said board attorney Gene Anthony. “It has never been addressed by this board, and no landlord has ever complained about it, either.
A restaurant sampling / art raffle for the Mental Health Association of Monmouth County had guests mingling among the the Manolo Blahnicks and Roberto Cavallis at the upscale Garmany clothier in Red Bank Thursday night. The event brought together a half-dozen restaurants and art galleries from town. (Click to enlarge)
Red Bank’s Dublin House pub is on the hook for more than $1 million of a $3.3 million jury award to the family a man killed by a drunk, off-duty State Trooper in Middletown four years ago, the Asbury Park Press reported Thursday last week.
Also having to pay into the settlement is the defunct Ashes Cigar Bar nightclub on Broad Street. A third Red Bank watering hole that was sued was spared from the judgment.
We thought last week’s Where, which we referred to as ‘three chairs, no wading,’ was a gimme.
A hasty push to move Red Bank’s traditional Christmas tree to Riverside Gardens Park for the coming holiday season failed Thursday night as town officials balked over questions about proper review.
Gripes from the public led downtown promoter Red Bank RiverCenter to ask the borough council for permission to relocate the tree shown at right being removed after the 2007 season which has been displayed for years in the Monmouth Street courtyard of the Dublin House, said executive director Nancy Adams.
“We’re getting complaints every year from residents to move it someplace that, frankly, is not a bar,” she said. “We want to make the residents happy.”
A former Red Bank man already facing charges for allegedly breaking into Bon Jovi’s mansion and other Navesink homes was arrested again Wednesday in Ocean County for a home burglary, the Asbury Park Press reports.
The newspaper reports that Nick Tracy, right, 21, of Beachwood was arrested after a brief chase following a daylight burglary of a Toms River home.
redbankgreen readers may recall Tracy as the guy who drove around Red Bank with a large bust of Napoleon Bonaparte seat-belted into the passenger seat of his car last March, shortly before his bust in the Middletown case.
Students and parents mourn the death of Markham Place School principal Donald Merce in May, 2008. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The motorist who killed Little Silver middle school principal Donald Merce in an automobile accident in 2008 pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in federal court Wednesday, the Asbury Park Press reports.
Dennis Smentkowski, a 46-year-old retired Long Branch police officer, claimed he’d taken four times the recommended dosage of the sleeping aid Ambien before he plowed into 58-year-old Merce’s car outside the east gate of Fort Monmouth on Oceanport Avenue, killing him instantly, the newspaper said.
Fire destroyed a camper parked in the driveway of a home at 2 Queens Drive in Little Silver around 3 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.
No information about the cause of the blaze or the extent of the damage was immediately available, but the nearby garage door was burned and siding had melted from the second-story eaves.
Authorities closed down Rumson Road between Harding Road and Prospect Avenue, as well as the eastern end of Church Street. (Click to enlarge)
Recent activity reports, unedited, as provided by the Middletown Township Police Department.
On October 25, 2011 Detective Kelly Godley and Patrolman Raymond Sofield arrested Marcin Burek, age 27, from Perth Amboy, NJ, for Luring, Resisting Arrest, Prostitution and Disorderly Conduct as a result of an investigation into a report made by three juvenile females, two age 17 and one age 13, and a 19 year old adult female who say Burek attempted to lure them into his vehicle.
File photo of former mayor and current mayoral candidate Jo-Ann Kalaka Adams. Below, a notice of tax sale in Tuesday’s Asbury Park Press. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Sea Bright mayoral candidate Jo-Ann Kalaka Adams owns or co-owns properties that are in arrears on borough taxes and scheduled for auction less than two weeks after next month’s election, according to a public notice published Tuesday.
Also on the list: a sitting council member, William Keeler, who’s not up for re-election next month.
An indignant redbankgreen reader sent us this photo of a Red Bank public works truck parked in a handicapped space at the City Centre Plaza strip mall on Water Street Tuesday.
The truck was there for half an hour, the reader wrote us, while two “healthy guys” moved boxes to a storage facility in the mall’s basement.
Your thoughts? (Click to enlarge)
Two years after his last and only visit, actor Alec Baldwin returns to Red Bank’s Two River Theater next month for a night of…
Well, chat, mostly. The pre-Internet kind, that is. Only, with a couple of hundred people looking on.
Baldwin and his friend and acclaimed Shakespearean Michael Cumpsty will settle in for an extended conversation focused on their work in, and shared love of, live theater, TRTC artistic director John Dias tells redbankgreen.
“He’s quite a formidable theater actor,” says Dias, a friend of Baldwin since they crossed paths working on a 1998 production of ‘MacBeth‘ at New York’s Public Theater, where Dias was the dramaturg and Baldwin had the lead. “He’s quite a persuasive force.”
Last tenanted by chic furniture dealer Design Front, 21 East Front Street is now home to a wedding and boudoir photo business as well as a DJ. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Vacant for more than two years, a high-profile storefront in downtown Red Bank has landed a small co-op of wedding-related businesses as tenants.
This is not, however, where your grandma went to have her engagement portrait taken. And when the curtains are drawn across the glass-fronted space, you can be sure something sexy is happening inside.
That’s not a photo that guy was carrying on River Road in Fair Haven last Friday afternoon; it was a mirror. (Click to enlarge)
The weather outlook for Tuesday is a picture-perfect reflection of an ideal autumn day.
Here’s the forecast from the National Weather Service:
Recent activity reports, unedited, as provided by the Middletown Township Police Department.
On October 21, 2011 at approximately 12:00 pm Corporal Bernard Chenoweth and Corporal George Freibott, responded to a residence on Marion Drive in reference to a burglary in progress. Upon arrival at the residence Corporal Chenoweth observed a subject, identified as Scott Gibson, age 27, from Bartram Road in Englishtown, NJ, running from the residence carrying a bag of stolen items. Corporal Chenoweth chased the subject on foot and was able to take him into custody after a brief struggle.
Yestercades, a 2,800-square-foot gaming emporium dedicated to classic video games of the 1970s and ’80s, opened with little fanfare Friday night and did a clanging, beeping business over the weekend, owner Ken Kalada tells redbankgreen. The pay-by-the-hour arcade is at 80 Broad Street in Red Bank, near the corner of Monmouth Street. (Click to enlarge)