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Thousands Gather In Trenton To Honor N.J. Special Olympians!
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LAWRENCE -- Four apartment units were rendered uninhabitable and two firefighters were injured battling a two-alarm blaze at the Lawrenceville Gardens Apartments Saturday.
Officials said the cause of the fire was electrical.
A neighbor of the Franklin Corner Road apartments reported smoke coming from a second-floor window of Building E around 12:30 Saturday afternoon.
Police encountered heavy smoke coming from the second floor of an end apartment unit when they arrived, Sgt. David Buxton said. Officers James Vardanega and Ed Podbielski evacuated the building.
Firefighters arrived a short time later with reports of a child still trapped on the second floor. The report turned out to be false, but two firefighters were injured while searching for the child.
Slackwood Fire Co. firefighter Chris Laird suffered back injuries when a ceiling collapsed on him and Lawrence Road Fire Co. firefighter Keith Kent suffered a burn on his hand. Both were treated at Capital Health System at Fuld hospital in Trenton and released, officials said.
Full story in Sunday's Times
BY MICHAEL RATCLIFFE www.nj.com/times
TRENTON -- With all the pomp and pageantry of an affair of state, more than 2,000 athletes from across the Garden State were honored last night as the opening ceremonies for the New Jersey Special Olympics' 2008 Summer Games were held at the Sovereign Bank Arena.
Today and tomorrow the athletes, with the support of about 4,000 volunteers, will compete in seven areas -- aquatics, bocce, gymnastics, powerlifting, softball, tennis, and track and field -- on The College of New Jersey campus in Ewing.
This year's opening ceremonies, the first to be held indoors, were dominated by an hourlong procession that saw the athletes, grouped by county, march into the arena led by bagpipers and a large contingent of police officers from all over the state. The officers formed a human tunnel through which the procession passed to the applause of a packed house of family members, friends and other well-wishers.
During the procession, each group of athletes was led by an honor guard made up of police officers from a department in their respective county. As each group passed them, the officers who formed the tunnel first saluted the flags carried by the honor guard, then exuberantly traded handshakes and high-fives with the athletes.
Once all the athletes had taken their seats in the stands, they were welcomed by Special Olympics officials, as well as Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes and Rutgers University head football coach Greg Schiano. Schiano has been named "honorary coach" of the summer games.
"I have seen Bruce Springsteen play here. I have seen Elton John play here. I've seen a hockey championship here. But nothing comes close to the event we just saw here tonight," Hughes told the athletes of watching their procession.
The ceremonies concluded with Becky Scheick of Ewing leading her fellow athletes in a recitation of the "Athlete's Oath," and then the arrival of the Olympic torch into the arena.
The torch, which earlier in the day had been escorted across New Jersey with the help of police officers, was passed to athlete Shaun Woolf of Montgomery. The arena erupted into a thunderous applause as Woolf lit the Olympic cauldron and Schiano declared, "Let the games begin."
