Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 15

1 COURIER-POST IN THE COURTS 6 LOCAL ROUNDUP 3 OBITUARIES 7 POLICE NOTEBOOK 3 TSi Delaware THURSDAY, MAHCH 3, 1383 Seat belt 26Jives, $72 mifflion ByJIMKONCOS Of the Courier-Post TRENTON Rose McHugh thought she was going to die, or worse, kill someone else. The Mount Laurel resident was driving home on Route 38 after visiting her husband, Joseph, who was recovering from surgery at Memorial Hospital of Burlington County, Mount Holly. She looked down for a second to check her parking brake while going through Mount Holly bypass intersection in Lumberton. The next instant, her van was struck broadside by a car and sent careening out of control toward a line of stopped traffic. "If I didn't have my seat belt on I'm sure I would have been knocked tQ the floor and hit those cars," McHugh said of the October 1986 crash.

vate research firm based in Maryland. "Although the report is only preliminary, we can see that the legislation appears to be having a positive influence on seat belt use by motorists in New Jersey," said DMV director Glenn R. Paulsen. However, the DMV concedes that belt use has not reached the 65 percent to 70 percent range that was envisioned under the state Seat Belt Use Act. The report also concludes that "more in-depth analysis must be conducted before the correlation between seat belt use and reduced fatalaties can be precisely quantified." Because of the "insufficient data" to properly evaluate the effectiveness of the law, the DMV is recommending the law be continued while further studies are conducted.

But the seat belt kept McHugh in her seat so she could steer toward the curb and hit her brakes, avoiding a potentially deadly crash. McHugh said she never considered wearing a seat belt until New Jersey enacted a mandatory law in October 1984. Now she and her husband won't drive without them. "I think the law is a wonderful thing. Everybody should wear a seat belt," McHugh said.

Safety belt use has more than dou bled from 18 percent to 41 percent since the seat belt law became effective on March 1, 1985, according to a report released yesterday by the state Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The seat belt law was the second in the nation and requires drivers and front seat passengers to buckle-up or face or a $20 fine. The citation The state Office of Highway Traf fic Safety plans to update yesterday's report this May to include 1986 figures and again in 1989 to show last year's accident statistics. No matter what the figures show, the 250 members of the state's Saved by the Belt Club are already sold on the benefits of seat belts. The club recognizes people like McHugh and 18 other Camden, Burlington and Gloucester county residents who were saved or escaped serious injury by using seat belts.

Each member is sent a bronze medal with a red, white and blue ribbon along with a citation. McHugh's proudly hangs in a plastic box in her living room to remind her of the seat belt that saved her life, she said. can only be issued if the automobile is first stopped for another violation. The report also showed that wearing seatbelts reduced fatalities by 6 percent in 1985. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration projects that 26 deaths, 1,436 moderate to critical injuries and 2,035 minor injuries were avoided on New Jersey highways in 1985 by the use of safety belts.

More than $72 million in legal, medical, and insurance fees are believed to have been saved by eliminating those injuries, the report said. That figure also includes the lost wages, lower purchasing power and tax revenue that would have been lost because of the accidents. The report was based on five surveys spanning two years by Rutgers University and Westat a pri GLENN R. PAULSEN says law has positive influence nn Carpenters learn scream i wo arresieci A. 3 stiect in area piai was siaym JL 13 4 trie By ourgis nil By KAREN KOFOED MULDOON Of the Courier-Post WASHINGTON TWP.

Police have made two more arrests in connection with a rash a burglaries in the Wedgewood section of the township, and more arrests are expected. To the cheers of residents in the area, police on Monday arrested Alex C. Allen, 19, after stopping him while he was driving on Bryant Road in an area of the township where there have been approximately 40 burglaries since last October. Allen, who gave police an address on Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden that turned out to be a used car dealership, initially was charged with possession of stolen property two rings police said they had discovered in his possession earlier and which they later linked with one of the burglaries. Later, police charged him with three burglaries in the Wedgewood section of Washington Township and with a fourth burglary in nearby Gloucester Township, police chief Richard Moore said at a press conference yesterday.

"A number of residents came out and cheered and clapped" when Allen was arrested, Moore said. Allen was being held in the Gloucester County Jail, Woodbury, in imimim? lieu of $2,500 full cash bail on the possession of stolen property charges. Bail had not yet been set on the burglary charges. Yesterday morning, police arrested a 16-year-old who lived in the neighborhood that has been plagued by the burglaries. His name was not released because of his age.

The chief said two other juveniles were arrested Jan. 27 and charged with three other burglaries in the Wedgewood section. Both were residents of the area. One had been released in the custody of his parents. The other was being held at the Clarksboro juvenile facility.

Moore said the two suspects arrested yesterday knew the two who were arrested on Jan. 27, but they weren't necessarily working together. The chief said he believes at least two other juveniles who live in the area were involved in the burglaries. "We have suspects," he said, adding that he believes that the six may have been responsible for most of the Wedgewood burglaries. Courier-Post photo by Sally Hunter Washington Township Police Chief The arrests occurred in the town-Richard Moore discusses the arrests ship's Wedgewood section, the scene of a Camden man and a local teen- of about 40 break-ins since October, ager on burglary charges this week.

Additional arrests are expected. Towns told 1 ess water or find new use 1 By SEAN McKINNEY Of the Courier-Post CAMDEN The woman's screams were loud enough to make three carpenters stop working Tuesday morning. "We were goofing around," said one. "We were saying it sounded like somebody getting killed. The carpenters, installing a wooden cornice at the McGuire Gardens public housing development in East Camden, said they didn't give much serious thought to the screams until learning the next day that police had found a woman's body and a man with a slashed throat in a nearby apartment the same apartment, they say, from which the screams came.

The carpenters, who refused to give their names, said the screams were low-pitched but intense, lasting 30 seconds to a minute at around 11 a.m. At about 3:40 p.m., 16-year-old Cherita Causey found the body of her 34-year-old mother, Janet, lying on a bed in the front, second-floor bedroom of the two-story apartment on the 2000 block of Westminister Avenue. Harvey Johns, 32, was found sitting unconscious on a chair about a foot from the bed, his throat slashed and his body slashed and punctured with a sharp instrument in several areas. Johns' condition was still critical but stable at Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center here yesterday. Police and investigators for the Camden County Prosecutor's office are still awaiting the results of pathological tests and studies to learn the cause of Causey's death.

The woman's body reportedly showed no signs of injury. Her death has been labeled suspicious. George Kerns, spokesman for county Prosecutor Samuel Asbell, said investigators are trying to figure out if Johns' wounds were self-inflicted or caused by an attack. But interviews yesterday with Causey's daughter and sister, Debra, 31, who lives next door, indicated the wounds may have been self-inflicted. "He tried to cut himself," said Cherita, the 16-year-old.

"He wrote a letter on a book on the bed. It said something about, 'she beat me out of But that's a lie because he never had $700. 1 couldn't read the rest of it. There was blood all over it." Cherita said her mother had argued with Johns on the telephone on the morning of the death, telling him not to come to the apartment. Johns was described as a recent acquaintance of the mother and had sometimes stayed in the apartment.

Cherita and Debra Causey said they found a ceramic picture frame and ceramic vases knocked over on a coffee table in the living room, indicating a struggle occurred. A curtain in the bedroom was torn halfway down and a crumpled, white shade was found curled up over the curtain rod. The daughter said a razor blade, apparently used by Johns, was found in the room. A pair of scissors that may have caused the puncture wounds is also believed to have been recovered. Debra Causey described her dead sister as a cocaine user who was warm and friendly but "fell in with the wrong crowd." Debra Causey said her sister met Johns several months ago.

"They were kind of off and on," said Debra. "He wasn't really her boyfriend." "She didn't want him around here anymore," said Cherita. "He was trying to bring his clothes in." Debra Causey said she was working her job as a cafeteria aide at the Cramer School Tuesday morning and didn't return home until around 1:30 p.m. The carpenters, who were putting a cornice on a brick building about 100 feet from the sisters' apartment building, said they saw nobody go into the dead woman's apartment that day. A woman identified as Janet Causey's friend knocked on the door and tried to get inside before and after the screams.

Cherita Causey, who is eight months pregnant and staying with her aunt in Pennsau-ken, returned home from school after the workers quit for thday. JL Jl Regional system urged for 9 towns WOODBURY The Gloucester County Board of Freeholders will urge state officials to approve a regional water supply system for nine towns to help curb a critical water shortage problem. The towns that will participate in the system are East Greenwich. Deptford. Mantua, National Park, Wer.onah, West Deptford, Westville, Woodbury and Woodbury Heights.

Under the regional water plan, designed by the New Jersey American Water water will be pumped from the Delaware River. All nine towns have approved resolutions urging adoption of the plan by the state' Department of Environmental Protection. By ROSE VENDITTI MclVER Of the Courier-Post Because of a growing scarcity of clean water, several communities, businesses and other entities in the tri-county area will get drinking water from new sources or use less water over the next five years, state officials said yesterday. They include about 35 communities and 42 housing developments, businesses and water companies, as well as Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base. All have been relying on the Potomac-Raritan-Magothy aquifer, an underground water source that is rapidly becoming depleted.

Because of that, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has ordered those with water permits in the tri-county area to reduce their water consumption by 35 percent and look for other sources. Today is the deadline for their response to the DEP. "We're pleased. Everyone is responding," said Richard H. Knopp, chief of the critical areas section of the DEP's Bureau of Water alternatives," Knopp said.

Switching from the Potomac-Raritan-Magothy aquifer to another one. Berlin and Pine Hill, for example, are going to be using the Mount Laurel-Wenonah aquifer. That water source isn't threatened, Knopp said. Cutting water use through conservation and recycling. The Merchantville-Pennsau-ken Water Commission and a number of businesses with DEP water permits want to try conservation before seeking other water sources, according to Knopp.

Not every community has accepted the DEP's order. Evesham is suing the state. The town's municipal utilities authority claims the cutbacks are unfair to developing communities like Evesham because it orders a 35 percent cutback of current water use, while Evesham is still growing. There will be little future impact of such cuts on fully developed towns like Haddon-field, according to Evesham officials. They want the state to take into account future growth when ordering cutbacks in water use.v Water woe3 New wells still plagued by high radium levels in Washington Township: Page 3B Allocation.

"We know, in writing or verbally, where everyone is planning to get their water." Those plans must be approved by the DEP, Knopp said. New water sources fall into three categories: Piping water from the Delaware River. This proposal by the New Jersey American Water Company would serve most Camden County communities as well as nine towns in Gloucester County, Knopp said. The water company estimates it will take at least five years and cost at least $100 million to pipe water in from the Delaware. There hasn't been any indication how much of this cost would be passed on to consumers.

Knopp said the five-year timetable isn't a problem. "We planned far enough ahead on this one to give ourselves some time to find test State schools chief proposes 11th- grade gra By EILEEN STILWELL Of the Courier-Post ninth-grade test "bumped up two years." as some have speculated. James Jones, vice of the beard, said he feared that another 'est might be the equivalent of a state-cnderseJ trac king system. When an eighth-grader fails, he said, that student will be ushered into different kind of high srhco! education than the student who passe Despite a rfsscussn'ti ef tlio need to improve basic skills, no v. us waJe yesterday of a darr.ajtr.t; report iss-iej earlier this year by the state Board of Hr-hcr Education.

That report said incoming freshman at the state's colleges anJ universities have not improved their scores on the New Jersey Collece Casir Skills Achievement Test in hKears, Another test is expected to boost the state's cost for the administration of the High School Proficiency Test (HSPT) from its current $1 million to $2.5 million. "What gets measured gets done," said Cooperman simply by way of explanation. Standardized tests already are given in the third and sixth grades and there are no plans to change that. According to the proposal, a version of the HSPT which has been given in the ninth grades since 1978 will be switched to the eighth grade as an "early warning" test. Failure will not affect a student's promotion into high school but would determine the extent of remedial help needed.

The llth-grade test, scheduled for its first official administration in December will determine if a student is eligible for a state-endorsed diploma. If not, a student may take the test again in the spring and twice during his senior year or return to school until age 20 in order to pass. Another alternative is to remain in school for a fifth year in preparation for the test. "Getting this through the Legislature will be a significant hurdle," said Cooperman, predicting opposition from urban superintendents and the New Jersey Educational Association. "Urban leaders tell me we're moving too fast and asking too much and that we'll increase the drop-out rate," said Cooperman.

He also promised that it "will not be the JAMESBURG Education Commissioner Saul Cooperman yesterday did the governor's bidding by proposing another statewide graduation test in the 1 1th grade. In his State of the State address in January, Gov. Thomas H. Kean suggested the addition of an llth-grade test as a way of improving the state's lackluster performance in basic skills. Cooperman followed through with a full proposal yesterday at the state Board of Education meeting here and promised to srearhead the necessary legislation req'' red I'sr the change by the end of the year.

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