Afternoon News Brief

The location the fire on McKinley Ave started has been determined by fire investigators.  The origin was a downstairs bedroom in the center of the residence, in the area of a mattress. The cause is unknown.  Another issue reported on was the non working fire hydrant near the residence.  While the damage to the hydrant on McKinley is unknown, it could have been from a wide variety of causes according to the city water department.  The fire and water departments ask residents that if they see a fire hydrant is not in good repair that you report it.

Rochester Police are searching for suspects after shots were fired on the city’s northeast side Wednesday night.  Around 8:45 p.m., officers responded to Seventh Street for gunshots heard in the area. Police say they found evidence of gunfire into two homes and two unoccupied vehicles in the area of Seventh and Wabash streets.  All residents inside both homes, which included eight children combined with ages ranging from 1 to 15, were not hurt.  No arrests have been made.

A couple is suing the Brighton Police Department after their 29-year-old son, Scott Matchett, took his own life. His two parents, who are both deaf, assert that the response to their son’s ongoing mental health crisis was inadequate due to a communication barrier.  On Feb. 24, 2021, the Matchett family called the police to help Scott, who was also deaf, during a mental health crisis. The family claims Brighton police denied them access to an American sign language interpreter, making it impossible for their suicidal son to receive proper care.  In the lawsuit, the Matchetts say they were forced to communicate with the police via notes on an iPad, which they believe limited the officers’ ability to gather relevant information about Scott and his condition.  The suit states that in April of 2021, Scott himself called 911 during another crisis, requesting an ASL interpreter. According to his family, Brighton police again did not provide one and failed to utilize a 24/7 remote video interpreter.  4 months later Scott was dead by suicide. 

A veteran DEA Agent is alleged to have been on the payroll of the mafia in the city of Buffalo.  Not the Bills mafia, the Buffalo Italian mafia.  In a federal trial that began this month, prosecutors portrayed Joseph Bongiovanni as a greedy racist who pocketed more than $250,000 in cash-stuffed envelopes over a decade and threw his colleagues off by opening bogus case files and encouraging them to spend less time investigating Italians and more time on Blacks and Hispanics.  When authorities caught him in 2019 he wiped his phones clean and retired from the DEA.  The 59-year-old Bongiovanni has denied the counts of bribery, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.  

The National Buffalo Wing Festival is one of 20 nominees for USA Today’s Best Specialty Food Festival.  According to Visit Buffalo Niagara, the festival is going into its 23rd year and has served over five million chicken wings and raised over $460,000 for local charities.  This year the festival will be held on August 31 and September 1 at Highmark Stadium.

Did you happen to see the meteor that streaked through Western New York’s sky Wednesday night at around 6:50 p.m.? It was visible to sky watchers over many states from Virginia to upstate New York, and even into eastern Canada.  It’s probable that the meteor was a “fireball”, which is a particularly bright meteor. Dozens of eyewitnesses described the meteor as appearing to explode as it darted through the night sky.  According to the American Meteor Society, the highest concentration of reports originated from northern Virginia and central Maryland. More than 150 reports were received. The Society’s trajectory model calculated that the meteor was traveling from southwest to northeast through the sky over western Pennsylvania before it burned up in our atmosphere.