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2016 Year in Review: April

January 5, 2017   ·   0 Comments

April 7, 2016

•  Marco Muzzo has been sentenced to ten years in prison after admitting responsibility for driving under the influence and being at fault for a collision that took the lives of three children and their grandfather in a horrific crash in Vaughan.

In addition to time served in pre-trial custody, the 29-year-old will serve nine years and four months. He was also sentenced to a driving prohibition for 12 years, which will begin after his release.

The heartbreaking incident occurred on Sept. 27, 2015 when Mr. Muzzo drove through a stop sign at Kipling Avenue and Kirby Road in Vaughan at high speed and T-boned the minivan carrying six members of a family. The crash claimed the lives of Daniel Neville-Lake, 9, Harrison Neville-Lake, 5, Milly Neville-Lake, 2,2 and their grandfather Gary Neville, 65. The children’s grandmother and great-grandmother were also seriously injured in the crash. Mr. Muzzo’s blood alcohol level was almost three times the legal limit.

•  Curves fitness for women reopened in Orangeville in early April. The club, located on Townline, opened up with new management in place. Penny Cussen and Christine Davis, along with Curves members and local dignitaries including Mayor Jeremy Williams, celebrated the facility’s grand reopening on March 31.

April 14, 2016

•  Boxer Jake Daoust had won the 2016 Canadian Amateur Middleweight Championship in the U19 division with a decisive tournament win over the weekend of April 2-3 in Quebec City.

Daoust previously won the Ontario championship to qualify for the national-level tournament. He fights our of the Big Tyme Fitness and Boxing gym in Orangeville.

The tournament had five boxers representing their province in a single elimination tournament – one loss and you’re out. Now 17, Daoust had his first amateur bout when he was ten years old, although he said he has been working out in the gym since he was just six years old, inspired by his older brother Alex.

Daoust now has 42 amateur fights behind him, with an impressive record and a national middleweight championship to look back on.

April 21, 2016

•  Orangeville Mayor Jeremy Williams briefly lost control of Orangeville Council on April 18. The fireworks began at roughly 9:40pm – a whole two hours and 40 minutes into the meeting.

Council were discussing a request from the Orangeville Police Services Board that $441,000 be transferred from its 2016 operating budget to the 2016 capital budget. Coun. Sylvia Bradley was not in agreement, instead moving to receive the report and leave the capital items as unfunded items for 2016.

The mayor, who is also the Police Services Board chair, stated that the board was merely “cleaning up the way we do things.”

Coun. Bradley asserted “there was surplus funds in the Police Operating budget, which the PSB went in and transferred to capital and bought a large number of items in December. This was done without approval of council. The $441,000 should have been a surplus for the Town of Orangeville. That (money) would have gone to other key items, such as debt repayment or reducing the tax burden.

Coun. Bradley said the additional money would have resulted in a tax reduction of approximately 1.25 percent for local residents.

•  A consultant’s report to Orangeville council recommended some major changes in the municipality’s public transit service. Presented to council Monday night, the report by Dennis Kar of Dillon Consulting Limited, focused on financially sustainable tactics that would optimize service, improve service quality and meet the demands of a growing Orangeville population.

Mr. Karr outlined the many challenges that the transit system must deal with over the next five years. In 2020, the Orangeville population is expected to be 32,000. In addition, ridership of Orangeville Transit is projected to grow from 112,000 riders to 186,000. However, the Town’s investment in transit will need to increase from $232,000 annually to over $500,000 with this new proposal.

•  Honouring. Faithful. Supportive. Those were they words used to describe the man who build the Tim Hortons franchise in Orangeville. Paul Preuss passed away surrounded by his loving family at Headwaters Health Care Centre on April 8 at the age of 76.

Mr. Preuss was the proud owner of five Tim Hortons restaurants in Orangeville.

April 28, 2016

•  After a three-week trial, a jury in London, Ont. Deliberated just three hours Monday (April 25) before finding an Orangeville man guilty of first-degree murder in the 2013 death and dismemberment of a younger man he knew from high school.

On April 26, Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance gave James McCullough, 23, the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years, and added four years, to be served concurrently, for offering indignity to the body of his victim, 20-year-old Alex Fraser

The trial was described in the London Free Press as “one of the most perverse and horrifying murder cases tried in London in recent memory. Fraser was stabbed 29 times and his body cut into pieces before it was packed up in two hockey duffel bags and found in the hotel room.”¬

•  The Orangeville Jr. B Northmen kicked off their 2016 season with a pair of huge wins in just two days.

The team traveled to Guelph to take on the Regals on April 24, cruising to a comfortable 10-3 win over the big city team. The Northmen returned to Orangeville to next night for a matchup with the Elora Mohawks at the Alder Street arena. Following a back and forth opening period, the Northmen stunned the Mohawks with six goals in the first nine minutes of the second period en route to a 12-5 final.

The wins saw the Northmen take an early lead atop the Mid West division of the OJBLL standings.

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