For the third time this week, someone has been killed on a Rochester-area highway. For the second time in three days, the victim was riding a motorcycle.
Greece Police say a motorcycle heading west on West Ridge Road crashed into a box truck that was making a turn at West Ridge and North Greece Roads. It happened about 11 a.m.
Police spokesman Jared Renee says it appears the motorcycle rider was speeding. He says the rider was ejected and was pronounced dead at the scene, although people working at nearby businesses tried to save him with CPR. They haven’t released his name yet. The truck driver wasn’t hurt.
Witnesses described the motorcycle going 90 to 100 miles per hour when it passed him…and then he heard the crash and saw a column of smoke rising from the burning motorcycle.
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Police in Irondequoit have charged a man with vehicular manslaughter and drunken driving, saying he’s responsible for the crash on East Ridge Road Thursday that killed an 87-year-old woman.
Terry Blue was also charged with DWI while having two children in his car…a seven month old and a 15-year-old.
Sergeant John Ballesty says numerous witnesses described Blue’s car speeding before the crash. He was described as smelling of alcohol and admitted to drinking not long before the crash at a birthday party.
Police identified the victim as 87-year-old Beatrice Polizzi. She died overnight at the hospital.
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The FBI will hold a news conference in South Carolina on Wednesday, updating the media on the case of a missing Chili teenager.
17-year-old Brittany Drexel vanished seven years ago on a Spring Break trip to Myrtle Beach. She hadn’t told her parents she was going. Drexel’s parents will meet with the FBI before the news conference next week.
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Monroe County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo was careful not to criticize her predecessor, Maggie Brooks, in asking the County Legislature to begin dismantling the county’s Local Development Corporations this morning.
The legislature approved a financing plan to take on and pay off the three LDCs debts. The measure still needs state legislature approval.
The Brooks administration set up the LDCs to manage major county projects including the emergency communications system upgrade. They were supposed to be more efficient and reduce the burden on taxpayers. Instead, they led to a bid-rigging scandal and an investigation by the State Attorney General that led to charges against four local officials.
Dinolfo says this will be more transparent and return control of essential functions to the county. She says the LDCs should be gone by the end of the year.
Opposition Democrats took a moment to say “we told you so.” Democrat Cindy Kaleh said the LDCs never produced the promised savings. Democrats say the bid-rigging and the legal expenses added up to $39 million cost to taxpayers.
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The Town of Irondequoit is calling on the former owner of the dead Medley Centre Mall to pay up.
A judge has ordered Bersin Properties LLC to pay the town $2 million to cover attorney’s fees and other money owed to the town from the mall’s tax abatement deal…which was terminated for non-performance. State Supreme Court Justice Matthew Rosenbaum ordered similar payments to the East Irondequoit Central School District and COMIDA — Monroe County’s Economic Development Authority.
The town says Bersin and CEO Scott Congel owe Irondequoit and Monroe County nearly $9 million from the failed mall renovation project and they will work aggressively to get it.
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The Greece woman rescued from her burning home on Luddington Lane early yesterday has died at Strong Memorial Hospital.
North Greece firefighters found 65-year-old Margaret Divincenzo in her smoke-filled house after searching among piles of her possessions and debris that were stacked chest-high. She had fallen behind a bed.
Divincenzo was breathing but unconscious when they found her. Firefighters say there were no working smoke detectors in the house.
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Students in the Brighton Central School District have Upstate New York’s highest SAT scores, based on information from the State Education Department ratings of all 414 school districts.
The “Business First” newspaper in Buffalo puts annual listings together from that data. They find Brighton leading the top ten, with Pittsford Central in third place. Penfield comes in a little further down the list at 13th best Upstate and Honeoye Falls-Lima is 17th.
To get these rankings they add the average scores by each student who took the test for a combined score. The state doesn’t make information available for private high schools.
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Area police officers and deputies carried the Special Olympics torch on an eight mile run this morning from Gates to the Liberty Pole in downtown Rochester.
The Spe
cial Olympics New York-Genesee Law Enforcement Torch Run raises money for the Special Olympics and raises awareness of the Special Olympics State Games beginning NEXT weekend at SUNY Brockport.
Police officers, troopers and deputies ran with the Special Olympians and took turns carrying the torch to a noon ceremony downtown.