Archive - News Article
April 14th, 2013
WOONSOCKET – The City Council tonight is expected to pass Mayor Leo T. Fontaine’s request to make June a tax-amnesty month.
The administration is asking the council to support legislation to waive 15 percent interest charges on delinquent taxes of up to $3,000. The offer would apply to any real estate owned by the same individual for three years, business equipment and motor vehicles.
As far as Tax Assessor Chris Celeste knows, the city has never had a tax amnesty event before, and he doesn’t anticipate that there will ever be one again if the council supports the plan.
April 13th
There is her faith, an anchor point that holds her safe in an ever-changing world, and there is also her large family – her brother Ralph, 89, the surviving member of her seven siblings, speaks with her often and her many nieces and nephews, great nieces and nephews, and even now adult pupils whom she taught for many years in area Catholic School.
Sister Hope, who turns 102 on May 19, is still in charge of her life as a sign in her room at Mount Saint Rita’s Health Centre professes.
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WOONSOCKET – A drive around the city this week offered a discerning motorist a range of approximately eight cents on the cost of a gallon of gasoline depending upon where that driver decided to pull in.
And if the motorist had also checked gasoline prices elsewhere in the Rhode Island, that range could increase to .45 cents under a rough comparison of high to low station offerings.
WOONSOCKET – The gray stucco house where the police found the battered body of a slain prostitute this week was more than just a crime scene.
It was a proving ground for the Woonsocket Police Department’s relatively inexperienced detective squad, more than half of whom had never investigated a homicide before.
“They want to show you just what kind of a police officer they’re capable of being,” says Police Chief Tom Carey. “They know a murder is the biggest type of investigation they’re ever going to be involved in.”
April 11th
PROVIDENCE – The man accused in the brutal killing of Donna Pike was a 43-year-old career criminal who had been released from a federal prison in West Virginia less than three months ago.
A police affidavit filed in District Court says Brian Audette confessed to killing Pike, 57, whose battered, lifeless body was found in her third-floor apartment at 79 Rathbun St. in Woonsocket Monday night.
Wearing a pair of dirty jeans and a rumpled polo shirt, Audette was formally arraigned on charges of first-degree murder before Judge Joseph Ippolito Thursday morning.
WOONSOCKET – A city man shot and killed himself Thursday moments after firefighters evacuated the man’s wife and young daughter from their apartment unit located in the sprawling Veterans Memorial public housing development in the city’s Fairmount section.
There were initial reports that gunshots were fired at police officers and firefighters responding to the emergency call at the home, but police later confirmed that no firefighters or officers on the scene were shot at or injured.
WOONSOCKET – Police on Wednesday announced the arrest of a suspect in the murder of a woman in her 79 Rathbun St. apartment, where her body had been found on Monday, but declined to provide further details on how they broke the case.
Brian Audette, 43, of 307 Elm St., Warwick, as charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of Donna Pike, 57.
Audette is to be arraigned on the charge today in District Court, Providence, police said.
April 10th
WOONSOCKET – In the most ambitious venture of its kind since the recession, a North Smithfield businessman is proposing a $1.25 million conversion of the historic Stadium Building into 21 small condominiums.
The city, which has seen scant private investment on a downtown strip pockmarked by vacancies and blight, is giving Leszek Przybylko’s proposal for 329 Main St. a cautious thumbs-up. But not everybody’s clapping.
WOONSOCKET – Social service agencies in the city are bracing for a rise in demand for assistance with food, shelter and other supports as federal sequester cuts begin taking a toll on extended unemployment compensation at the end of the month.
About 1,120 city residents receive the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits, which is about 14 percent of the total statewide, according to the state Department of Labor and Training. The average EUC check is $377 a month and will shrink by about $47.
April 9th
WOONSOCKET – Police say a woman whose body was found in her home Monday night was the victim of a homicide, but they aren’t saying much else.
The victim was identified as 57-year-old Donna Pike, who lived on the top floor of 79 Rathbun St., a gray, three-story stucco behind Lee’s Convenience Store.
Saying they don’t want to jeopardize an ongoing investigation, the police disclosed few details about how they believe Pike was murdered, the condition of the body or where in the apartment it was found.
