Chelsea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YmxJftD_VQ&feature=player_embedded

BOSTON- Dorchester’s Douglas Bennett for Sheriff of Suffolk County.

Bennett's statement is as follows and he will be explaining to the voters why they should vote for him tomorrow morning Friday May 31th at 7AM on TOUCH 106.1FM:

"With the appointment of Andrea Cabral to the Public Safety Cabinet Position in the Governor’s administration, there will be a special election in September 2014 to elect a full-time Sheriff to serve out the remainder of a six year term which expires in 2016. Therefore, I ask for your support for Sheriff of Suffolk County. I am starting early in effort to run an aggressive and triumphant campaign.

As Sheriff, I will oversee a $122 million budget, the Nashua Street Jail and South Bay House of Correction, and the Civil Service Process here in the county.

A Chelsea man was charged last week with a variety of gun charges and with charges of possession of Class A, B, D and E drugs (but not C), the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Among the charges facing Melvin Jones, 39: Illegal possession of a gun that had been stolen from an evidence locker at Chelsea District Court - a black Norinco 9-mm semiautomatic pistol. Prosecutors say the gun was found with two rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber, and the safety mechanism off.

Investigators are still trying to track how Jones wound up with the gun, the DA's office says.

Jones was arraigned last Tuesday. Judge Lawrence McCormick set bail at a total of $120,000.

Prosecutors say police arrested him after undercover police officers bought crack and heroin from him in two purchases.

Innocent, etc.

A 72-year-old Chelsea man with a record of drug and gun charges dating to 1968 was pulled out of his Prius Friday afternoon and arrested after police found ammo and numerous prescription pain pills on him, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

A man with several aliases was ordered held on bail today on charges he shot Elder Morales, 21, to death around 9 p.m. yesterday at 52 Blossom St., the Suffolk County District Attorney's office and Chelsea Police report.

The suspect, known as Jonathan Castro, Manuel Castro and Manuel Jonathan Castro Menjivar, 22, was arrested this morning.

The DA's office provided this account:

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State House News Service reports the state Department of Transportation plans to replace Tobin Bridge tollbooths with an "open tolling" system that will either debit your E-ZPass account or snap a photo of your license plate and then send you a bill. Could be in place by year's end.

A Chelsea man faces drug-trafficking charges for the meth-stuffed Valentine's Day bear he allegedly accepted delivery of last week, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports, adding the package also contained several unadulterated heart-shaped Whitman's Samplers boxes of chocolate.

A Chelsea man released from a 2 1/2-jail sentence for drug dealing because his evidence was certified by former state chemist Annie Dookhan wound up back in jail yesterday after police found him in possession of "eight baggies of suspected crack cocaine packaged for individual sale," the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

The DA's office says Chelsea officers responded to the Bellingham Square McDonald's last night when Jonathan Vaughan, 26, allegedly refused a request to leave when workers saw him drinking a can of Natural Ice Beer. According to the DA's office:

Two men were arraigned today on charges they smashed a Chelsea resident upside the head Sunday as punishment for the sneakers they say he stole from them.

Alexander Guevara, 21, of Chelsea, and Antonio Rivera, 21, of Boston, had bail set at $1,500 and $1,000 respectively, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's office, which provided this account:

Chelsea police responded to the area of Grove and Highland streets at about 4:15 on Sunday afternoon to find a 24-year-old Chelsea man sitting on the ground holding his head. The man told police he had been hit in the head with a tire jack by a man with a Rolling Stones tattoo on his neck who apparently believed the victim had stolen sneakers from him in Revere.

Witnesses in the area corroborated that account, saying that two men exited a gray Lexus, go to the trunk, and retrieve a tire jack and a baseball bat. One of the men, now believed to be Guevara, beat the victim in the head with the jack. The second man, now believed to be Rivera, used a knife to threaten the victim and two of the witnesses.

The victim was taken to Mass. General and is expected to survive, the DA's office says.

Innocent, etc.

A man found unconscious at the Wyndham Hotel in Chelsea will be arraigned as soon as he recovers from the heroin overdose he got when some of the balloons burst, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Doctors recovered some of the balloons from the stomach of Luis Sanabria-Morales, 40, but he may still have more plastic-coated heroin inside, the DA's office says. Spokesman Jake Wark says authorities are willing to let nature take its course:

In some cases, such as those in which a person is observed swallowing the drugs or it's very early on in the ingestion, police may get a warrant to have the person's stomach pumped. In a situation like this one, where that opportunity has gone, we usually wait. Doctors take X-rays to track the course of the items and monitor their health throughout. They may take other actions -- potentially including an operation, I guess -- depending on medical necessity and the best interests of the patient/suspect, but that's a medical decision and not a law enforcement one. We're content to wait until the stuff becomes "abandoned property."

Innocent, etc.

Channel 7 tweets.

Meanwhile, in East Boston, people are reporting bright flashes, possibly from exploding transformers.

Mary J. shows one of the Tobin souvenirs that are now yours for the asking underneath the bridge in Chelsea - although she's not all that entranced, based on her tweet to MassDOT:

A piece of the rotting Tobin bridge on Beacon St. in Chelsea - fix it already.

MassDOT contractors are in the middle of a two-year rehab of the bridge. Last month, you may recall, the work had to be stopped when testing showed problems with the pipe network used for firefighting.

The Globe reports the Chelsea Collaborative decided to return a $40,000 grant after a visit from a Catholic Campaign official, who began "speaking at length to the group about the need to avoid work that conflicted with Catholic teachings, including activities that might 'support the gay lifestyle.' "

A Chelsea man whose manslaughter conviction was overturned because the jury heard testimony it shouldn't have is not entitled to damages from the state for the time he spent in prison, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today.

Chelsea and Boston Police are looking for two men in a green Explorer who used a crowbar to threaten an ice-cream driver into handing over his money shortly after 9 p.m. outside 107 Chester Ave. in Chelsea.

A worker at King Arthur's Lounge who got into an argument with a drunk customer shortly before the guy was ejected clocked out, followed him outside and punctured him so badly Chelsea Police summoned homicide investigators when they arrived, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office charges.

The Chelsea Record can't restrain its enthusiasm for the city's first Starbucks - finally, proof that Chelsea is no longer a gritty backwater where people have no appreciation for "a richer, sometimes exotically mixed cup of coffee" but instead a more refined community on the move:

A Starbucks in Chelsea is a good barometer of things that are happening here.

Better yet, it is a good barometer of things to come.

We welcome Starbucks.

What a wonderful addition to the mall.

State Rep. Gene O'Flaherty of Chelsea blames Kevin Cullen for making him resign as co-chair of the Judiciary Committee.

ChinatownKicks ran across this ice box graveyard in Chelsea.

Copyright ChinatownKicks. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Boston has gasoline trucks in the North End and now Chelsea has ethanol trains headed to Revere. The Chelsea Record reports Chelsea is trying to get other communities along the proposed train's route - basically, the Fitchburg commuter line - to join it in opposing the idea. The ethanol would be mixed into local gasoline supplies at a Revere facility.

read more at bluemassgroup

The Chelsea Record reports on impending work along Marginal Street that will mean both a new park and an expanded giant salt pile. Some of the old tanks' structure will be reused as shelters and design components of the new park.

The Herald reports a clerk magistrate at Chelsea District Court has been reassigned to another court as investigators try to figure out how three guns being held in a court evidence safe were stolen.

Two of the guns were from cases in which the trials had already ended, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. The third, however, was being held as evidence against Sokhorn Sor, still awaiting trial in Suffolk Superior Court for illegal weapons possession.

The Herald says Sor's lawyer will move to have the case against her client thrown out. Channel 4 reports Sor is an alleged member of the Bloods gang in Revere.

Jake Wark, spokesman for the DA's office, says prosecutors still have a case even without the Sig Sauer P232:

Nancy Parker, 53, will be arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court today on charges she faked an attack on her MBTA bus in Chelsea, then collected worker's compensation.

Parker, of Burlington, is formally charged with worker's compensation fraud, misleading an investigator and filing a false report for the Oct. 2, 2007 incident on a 111 bus, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. The T fired her after they learned of discrepancies in her claim, the DA's office says.

In 2009, a Chelsea District Court judge tore into prosecutors, saying that while Parker had changed her initial story of being shot by a stranger in a robbery attempt to being shot by an ex-lover, there was little evidence to suggest she was lying about actually being shot.

Her arraignment today comes after an indictment by a grand jury.

Innocent, etc.

That would, of course, be disgraced former Chelsea Housing Authority director Michael McLaughlin, whom the Globe reveals was just a bit more than the "campaign volunteer" Murray said he was - and that worrying about McLaughlin may have kept him up and led him to doze off on that Crown Vic-smashing ride.