EDISON, N.J., Aug. 11 (ZFJ) — Andrew “Dean” S. DeNicola, 55, band director at John P. Stevens High School for 50 years, died on May 20, 2024, after many years of battling heart disease.
“His devotion toward music, the band program, and his students was unparalleled, and anyone who had the pleasure of getting to know Andy knew he was having fun and living his life to the fullest,” wrote the Central Jersey Music Educators Association on Instagram.
EDISON, N.J., July 26 (ZFJ) — Joan Franklin Polanco, 37, of Edison, has been charged in connection with the fatal stabbing that occurred in Edison on Sunday, July 21, 2024, announced Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone and Chief Thomas Bryan of the Edison Police Department.
On July 21, Edison police responded to a call for a welfare check of the victim, according to a criminal complaint and affidavit. Shortly after, at about 4:37 p.
EDISON, N.J., July 24 (ZFJ) — Muslim students from Edison High School are alleging that one of the school’s assistant principals intimidated them over their club’s annual iftar event during a February meeting.
Iftar is the breaking of the daily fast during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan. The New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NJ), a Muslim civil rights group, says that Assistant Principal Nicole Himmelstein met with eight board members of the school’s Moon and Stars Association (MSA) following their request to hold a joint iftar event and invite students from Piscataway and North Brunswick.
EDISON, N.J., July 2 (ZFJ) — Edison unveiled a new sign commemorating the Battle of Short Hills at Oak Tree Pond Historic Park on Wednesday, June 26.
The sign, installed 250 years after the American Revolutionary War battle, was a gift from the Middlesex County Board of County Commissioners.
The Short Hills Battlefield Historic District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
EDISON, N.J., June 30 (ZFJ) — Edison police opened a substation in Menlo Park Mall on May 24. It is located in the former Jos A. Bank store between Barnes & Noble and a parking garage.
Police officials celebrated the opening, which Deputy Chief Robert Dudash said had been “a brainchild of the police department and the mall for a lot of years now.”
“This substation will actually enhance our services to the public and to the mall,” said Chief Thomas Bryan at the ribbon cutting.
WOODBRIDGE, N.J., April 4 (ZFJ) — Woodbridge Center has been sold to new management, announced Woodbridge Mayor John E. McCormac in his State of the Township address on Feb. 23.
“Woodbridge Center, like major malls across America, has struggled because of the internet and the ease of buying directly online,” he said. “It has done an admirable job of diversifying outside of basic retail by attracting new tenants, but it has just not been enough.
SCOTCH PLAINS, N.J., Feb. 7 (ZFJ) — The discovery of a firearm in Union Catholic High School on Monday, Jan. 22, resulted in lockdowns at nearby schools and the arrest of one student.
The Scotch Plains Police Department said in a press release that it received a call at about 10:45 a.m. from a Union Catholic administrator concerning a handgun that had been recovered in the school.
The school was placed on lockdown, and Scotch Plains police officers recovered the weapon.
EDISON, N.J., Feb. 1 (ZFJ) — A suspected gas leak resulted in the evacuation of J.P. Stevens High School students and staff on Thursday, Feb. 1, according to the school district.
An odor of gas near the art and music wing and in the back of the building caused the evacuation, which, according to a ZFJ reporter, began around the start of third period.
The Edison Fire Department and Elizabethtown Gas Company concluded that a construction crew hit an inactive gas line that still had residual gas remaining in it, resulting in the odor, according to a statement by Edison Township Public Schools.
Jan. 16 (ZFJ) — “It’s not clickbait,” MatPat begins, in a video uploaded on Tuesday, Jan. 9. The title: “Goodbye Internet.”
The video announces that MatPat’s last video on The Game Theorists, a channel centered around detangling the storylines of countless games, will be uploaded on March 9. Since its first theory, posted on April 18, 2011, Matthew “MatPat” Patrick has been the lead face of the channel, recounting theories around popular game franchises such as Five Nights at Freddy’s and Pokémon and ending each episode with his iconic, “But that’s just a theory—a Game Theory!
Jan. 14 (ZFJ) — Sixteen hours into 2024, informational YouTuber Tom Scott uploaded the final video of his Things You Might Not Know series, which spanned exactly ten years with weekly uploads after its start in 2014.
From his first video—“Breakfast: Fortified With Iron,” posted on June 6, 2006—to his first (and likely last) video of the new year, Tom Scott has taken his place in YouTube as an educational entertainer, introducing new facts and experiences to an audience now consisting of more than six million subscribers.
