Free Republic

NEWARK, N.J. – A former caseworker for the New Jersey Department of Children and Family Services, Division of Child Protection and Permanency, was indicted Thursday on charges of possession and transportation of child pornography and attempted sex trafficking of a minor. Trent Collier, 56, of Kearny, New Jersey, is charged in a three-count indictment with one count of possession of child pornography, one count of transportation of child pornography, and one count of attempted sex trafficking of a minor. According to documents and statements made in court: On Sept. 28, 2021, Collier arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport aboard a...

President Biden on Monday repeated — for the fifth time this year — a made up story to illustrate his closeness to Amtrak and a former conductor named Angelo Negri. Biden told the tale — declared “false” by CNN — during a speech at the NJ Transit maintenance facility in Kearny, NJ, as he touted the $1.2 trillion Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill that would boost funding for Amtrak. “I apologize because some of you have heard this,” Biden said as he told the reliable laugh line. “When I was vice president I used to like to take the train home...

Parishioners at several New Jersey churches are distraught about a string of creche crimes: the theft of baby Jesus statues.Statues of the infant have been taken from five churches since Christmas Eve, according to the Archdiocese of Newark. Parishioners at St. Clare Church in Clifton reacted with dismay Sunday after a baby Jesus statue was apparently stolen from the church's outdoors nativity scene overnight. The statue disappeared between 7 p.m. Saturday and 7 a.m. Sunday, according to Father Peter Galbik. The small figure had just been purchased this holiday seaso "We are deeply disturbed that some group or person stole...

An empty lot, littered with rocks and roped off by chains, is all that remains of the butcher shop where Tony Soprano once held backroom meetings and sipped espresso at outdoor tables. Satriale's, the Kearny landmark and fictional pork store that became one of the most infamous icons of the New Jersey mob world created by "The Sopranos," was demolished last month to make way for a condo development. Construction of the nine-unit project, dubbed -- what else? -- "The Soprano," is expected to start next year. For years, property owner Manny Costeira leased the empty building to HBO, which...

Bill Styple and time have a peculiar relationship. He lives in the present, writes about the past and wants to save both the present and the past for the future of his town. "I just want to preserve for our children a little of what I and my parents had in the past," says Styple, 46, who, with others from Kearny, is about to give the Hudson County town, its residents and its children a gift: A statue of a Civil War soldier. A replica of a statue that, for nearly 50 years until 1933, stood mute guard before the...

Richard Shindell has never loved science. Yet the Pennsylvania financier is about to become one of the most significant benefactors of public research in New Jersey. The world may see the silver-haired, 70-year-old Rutgers University graduate as another driven millionaire from the world of high finance. But inside, Shindell says, he's still the cash-strapped Kearny kid who had to sell a prized fishing boat he had built with his father -- for $241, a tidy sum at the time -- to finish his college education. Shindell has been a regular benefactor to Rutgers ever since, donating steadily to programs supporting...

8,000 Applicants For 350 Jobs At N.J. Wal-Mart BY DAVID LOMBINO - Staff Reporter of the Sun June 13, 2006 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/34316 Wal-Mart tomorrow will open its newest store just more than seven miles from Manhattan, in Kearny, N.J., part of its strategy to ring the city with stores in order to hasten their arrival here. The store received more than 8,000 applications for 350 jobs, a Wal-Mart executive said. Although Wal-Mart is the nation's largest retailer, boasting more than 4,000 stores nationwide, it has no outlets in the five boroughs, and in the last 16 months, two attempts at...

Who abandoned 'Cecilia'? Saturday, April 16, 2005 The white cloth in the dirt caught the priest's eye.A spring sun was shining. His schedule was open, so the Rev. Michael Ward stepped from his rectory and headed across the courtyard to the winter-scarred garden by the side door of St. Cecilia's Roman Catholic Church in Kearny.It was only a few days before Easter Sunday, and Ward, the pastor of St. Cecilia's, wanted the new plantings arranged just right. Tulips here. Daffodils there.But what was this white cloth in the dirt?Ward bent over, reached out a hand, and pulled. "Then I saw...

<p>When Steve Jones carried a curious duct-taped tin can with wires protruding from its clear plastic top into Sen. Rick Santorum's office last month, a wide-eyed Senate staffer remarked, "I'm surprised you got this stuff up here."</p> <p>So was Jones. But for reasons other than heightened security on Capitol Hill. For more than a decade, the house painter from Salt Lake City has run up against public indifference as he promoted the jury-rigged can he insists would save lives in a dirty-bomb attack by terrorists.</p>