Search for The Westfield News
WEATHER TONIGHT Winter Weather Advisory
The Westfield News Serving Westfield, Southwick, and the surrounding Hilltowns
— W.H. AUDEN
www.thewestfieldnews.com SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2015
VOL. 84 NO. 050
75 cents
Fire system fails while car burns at gas pumps
Blandford hoping for water again soon By PETER FRANCIS Staff Writer BLANDFORD - Blandford Town Selectman and Water Commissioner William Levakis was forced to declare a state of emergency Monday after a water main froze and broke under the town’s North Street Bridge, leaving almost 20 families in the community without water and some without heat. A challenging prospect for any community, but especially one as small as Blandford, a hilltown with a population of just over 1,200 that has relied on a supply truck from Connecticut to provide almost 6,000 gallons of drinking water this week. Levakis said Friday that the town has been teaming up with local contractors and representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) this week to mend the broken pipe and restore water service to the impacted families and community members. “It froze (President’s Day) and we tried to get help, but we couldn’t get much right away,” said Levakis from the site Friday. “We’re getting really close to bringing it online now and everyone’s working really hard,” said Levakis. “We have all kinds of insulation for the pipe, putting in the last valves and cement, so it won’t be long now. Hopefully everything goes right.” Levakis said that after the work is complete, workers will go doorto-door to make sure that the their water is running, adding that the temperatures he and the crews were subjected to were brutally cold, making it difficult to even speak. “We’ve got all kinds of crews with the Blandford Water Department. (FEMA) is working well with us right now,” he said. “We’ve got contractors working that jumped right in on site right away.” Levakis said that Bernard St. Martin, Blandford’s water superintendent, will be checking the line and then running tests on the water to make sure it is safe for consumption.
“You owe it to us all to get on with what you’re good at.”
WESTFIELD MIDDLE SCHOOL SOUTH
South Middle music students recognized By PETER FRANCIS Staff Writer WESTFIELD – Several students from South Middle School have received some serious honors for their skilled participation in both chorus and band since the end of last year. At the Massachusetts Music Educators Association Western Districts Junior Festival, held on December 13 at Westfield State University, seventh graders Aaron Muldrew and Hadleigh Leclair received recognition for their respective work with the trumpet and french horn in the school band, while eighth graders Diana Stuzhuk and Ruth Krapova were duly honored for their skill with the flute and percussion. Having made the final cut, these students will be performing at the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center on Saturday, March 14, with other instrumental and choral students in western Mass. In addition to the sterling work of Muldrew, LeClair, Stuzhuk and Krapova with percussion, brass and wind instruments, sixth grader Hannah Bruno, a soprano in the school’s chorus, also made it into the prestigious Massachusetts All-State Treble Chorus for the second year in a row, selected as one of the top 200 choral singers in the Commonwealth from a pool of 600 other auditionees in grades 4, 5 and 6. Bruno, who in addition to singing plays clarinet and oboe in the South Middle School
band, will be performing in the Massachusetts All-State Treble Chorus concert at the Boston Seaport Hotel on Saturday, March 21. Regarding Bruno’s success, Richard Pope, her music teacher and chorus director at Juniper Park Elementary school, refers to her as “one of the most talented musicians I’ve taught in my tenure as a music teacher in the Westfield Schools.” “Her work ethic and determination has led her to have much success in music and her kind nature makes her such a pleasure to work with,” said Pope, who worked with Bruno during the audition process for the All-State Treble Chorus a year ago. “She was nothing but focused during each session, and she practiced diligently on her own time to improve her performance,” he said. “Because of this, she made it into the chorus and she represented western Massachusetts so well at the rehearsals and performance in Boston.” Luke Baillargeon, the band director at South Middle School, is working with Bruno this year in preparation for the Boston show and said Friday that he has seen her confidence level surge this year in chorus. “Her singing has gained some more expressive qualities and her sight singing ability has improved. She can sing a piece just by looking at the sheet music,” said Baillargeon, adding that Bruno is looking forward to working See Music Students, Page 8
Blandford Ski Area celebrates jubilee By PETER FRANCIS Staff Writer BLANDFORD – The Blandford Ski Area will be celebrating the winter season with its annual jubilee next Saturday, February 21. Some of the day’s events will include the Inferno Downhill Scholarship Race at 2 p.m. on the Broadway Trail, with proceeds for the event going into a scholarship fund that will be presented to a college bound high school senior from the Blandford Race Team, whose members hail from Agawam, Westfield and Gateway Regional School Districts. At 6 p.m. that evening, Blandford Ski Area ski instructors will present a torch light parade down the Broadway Trail, an annual event where club members join the instructors to gather out on the slope and cheer the parade of torches as the instructors ski down the mountain. Blandford Ski Area Marketing Director David Fraser is excited for the event, which he says goes back at least two decades.
“It usually happens the Saturday of the school vacation week and it is an opportunity for club members to enjoy a meal and a past president of the club, Dave Gibb, will be making Gluehwein, a warm German/Austrian winter drink known to tourists as a popular drink to be enjoyed after a long day on the slopes,” said Fraser, adding that there will be representatives from ski companies doing product demos in the morning, and that memberships for next year will also be on sale for visitors. Following the conclusion of the torch light parade, Fraser said there will be a chicken parmigiana, lasagna and eggplant dinner held for club members and visitors. “The ticket sales are just under 100 (people), so we’re hoping for 150,” he said Friday afternoon, adding that he’s expecting several hundred non-members to hit the slopes this weekend. Tickets for the jubilee dinner are $18 for club members and $23 for non-members, while tickets for children ages 6-10 are $8.
Hernandez jurors see video of victim getting into car By MICHELLE R. SMITH Associated Press FALL RIVER (AP) — Grainy surveillance video shown Friday to jurors in the murder trial of former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez shows the victim an hour before he was killed climbing into a car that prosecutors say was driven by Hernandez. Hernandez is charged in the June 17, 2013, shooting death of Odin Lloyd, who was dating his fiancee’s sister. A neighbor who lived across the street from Lloyd in the Dorchester section of
Boston captured the video on three surveillance cameras on his property early that morning. In the video, Lloyd is seen around 2:30 a.m. walking up and down the sidewalk outside his home. At 2:32 a.m., a sedan pulls up. He enters the rear passenger side, and it drives away. Prosecutors have said Hernandez was driving a Nissan Altima he had rented, accompanied by acquaintances Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz. Both men are also charged in the killing. They will be tried separately. At 2:53 a.m., the Altima was photo-
graphed driving through a toll plaza on the Massachusetts Turnpike without paying, according to testimony Friday by Rocky D’Angelo, who works at the company that manages electronic toll collection for Massachusetts. Prosecutors showed a photograph of the car’s license plate as it drove through the toll plaza. Prosecutors have said the men then drove to an industrial park near Hernandez’s home in North Attleborough, where Lloyd was shot. His body was found later that See Hernandez, Page 8
By CARL E. HARTDEGEN Staff Writer WESTFIELD – A Russell Road gas station was enjoined from selling gas after the station’s fire suppression system failed with a car fully engulfed in flames at the gas pumps. City police and firefighters were dispatched to the Circle K – Irving gas station and convenience store at 1400 Russell Road Friday morning for a report of a car fire. The first officer arrived at the station seven minutes after the 9:39 a.m. alarm and found a Volkswagen Beetle fully involved in flames at the pumps. Firefighters began arriving three minutes later and extinguished the fire. Officer Jason Williams report that the operator of the car, a Blandford resident, said that she had seen smoke while driving eastbound on Route 20 and assumed that her car needed oil so she stopped at the gas station, parking at the pumps while she entered the store to buy oil. The operator told police that when she exited the store she saw more smoke and saw the paint on the car’s hood was bubbling. Then, the car burst into flames. The attendant at the station, police report, shut down the gas pumps and attempted to activate the fire suppression system but it failed. After the firefighters extinguished the fire, Deputy Chief Patrick Egloff, the department’s fire prevention officer, ordered that the gas pumps remain out of service until the problem with the fire suppression system could be rectified. A department spokesperson reported later in the day that an electrical system failure was found to have been the reason the suppression system did not activate and was repaired, allowing normal operations to resume at the gas station.
Attorney General files support for sex trafficking lawsuit BOSTON (AP) — Attorney General Maura Healey threw her support behind a civil lawsuit aimed at a website that carries personal ads for people looking for sex, alleging the company assists in human trafficking. Healey filed a brief Friday in U.S. District Court in Boston urging the court not to dismiss the lawsuit against Backpage.com, filed by three women who say they were sold for sex on the website when they were as young as 15. MAURA HEALEY Healey argues that websites that knowingly support Massachusetts attorney general human trafficking — and try to deceive the public and undercut law enforcement’s efforts to protect victims — should not be immune from liability. Backpage.com has asked the court to dismiss the case. Lawyers for the website did not immediately return a request for comment but in the past have said that the company disputes the allegations and does more than any other online classified site to prevent the trafficking of minors. Healey said she felt it was important for her office and the state to weigh in on the lawsuit, given what she said is the serious problem of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Massachusetts. “What this is about is human victims — young people, people who are vulnerable, people who find themselves taken advantage of and brought into a life of crime and exploitation — and we’re going to speak out against it,” Healey said Friday. Lawyers for the website in a similar lawsuit in Seattle have argued the suit should be thrown out because the website didn’t write the ads, so it’s not liable, pointing to the federal Communications Decency Act. They argued Congress wrote the act to preserve free speech on the Internet by giving immunity to websites for items posted by users or members of sites. Healey said Backpage.com is trying to hide behind a law Congress passed during the early days of the Internet to wall themselves off from responsibility.