Morning News Brief
Written by Tom Tharp on November 15, 2023
A tractor-trailer driver has a “severe” arm injury after a crash Wednesday morning on the Inner Loop in Rochester. New York State Police responded just after 7 a.m. near the St. Paul Street exit for a report of a crash with some trapped. Multiple police and fire crews responded, along with a hazmat team. Police said the tractor-trailer was eastbound when it struck a guardrail and overturned. The Rochester Fire Department reported “heavy entrapment” at the scene. The 64-year-old male driver was taken to Strong Memorial Hospital for his injury.
A 15-year-old is charged after being pulled from a stolen vehicle that crashed early Wednesday in the city of Rochester. Police responded to a report of a crash with a person trapped on Tremont Street around 3 a.m. When officers arrived, they discovered a disabled Kia SUV with a teen in the driver’s seat. The Rochester Fire Department arrived to extract the teen from the vehicle. The teen was taken to a local hospital with a non-life-threatening lower-body injury. Police said the driver lost control of the stolen vehicle, striking a telephone pole and another vehicle before stopping on the opposite side of the street. The teen is charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
O’Lacy’s Irish Pub and restaurant is closed. Owner Roger Christiano closed O’Lacy’s on School Street in Batavia Wednesday, 18 months after he took over the popular public house in 2022 from former owner Kent Ewell. He posted a sign on the door saying that he couldn’t devote the time and effort necessary to run the restaurant because of his wife’s declining health. He said he is closing the pub with a heavy heart and that he hopes the restaurant can reopen again under new ownership in the future.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo Inc. James announced the lawsuit Wednesday at Canalside in Buffalo alongside state and local leaders. The lawsuit alleges that hundreds of PepsiCo products have been found along the Buffalo River and caused public harm in the city. In addition, the lawsuit charges PepsiCo with failing to warn consumers about the potential environmental and health risks of its single-use plastic packaging. James said that “no company is too big to ensure their products do not damage our environment and public health.” A study found that Pepsi product packaging was the most plentiful plastic waste in the Buffalo River. Microplastics have been detected in the City of Buffalo’s drinking water. The water is sourced from Lake Erie, which runs less than a mile from the Buffalo River.
According to frustrated employees, the Tesla Gigafactory in the south of Buffalo is infested with bedbugs. One Tesla employee shared a video of a bed bug she says was crawling on the floor of her work space Monday on X which is also owned by Tesla owner Elon Musk. Workers say the outbreak began last Thursday. An OSHA spokesperson shared that the agency has actually received dozens of calls regarding bed bugs inside the South Buffalo factory. OSHA says that it’s investigating all of this but doesn’t have any specific workplace standards for bed bugs. Tesla says they sprayed for the bedbugs but the complaints continue along with new complaints of chemical exposures.
The Village of LeRoy has a new ambulance. Since 2021 the LeRoy Ambulance Service has been fundraising for a new vehicle and, because of fundraisers and an anonymous donor, they were able to take delivery of a shiny new ambulance on Wednesday. The new ambulance is a 2023 Chevy G-4500 Chassis that has been converted to an ambulance by Medix Specialty Vehicles using their MSV II 170 ambulance box. The ambulance was purchased from Gorman Emergency Vehicles and had a final price in excess of $200,000. An anonymous donor gave 100,000 dollars to the company and they fundraised the rest over the last 2 years.
