The Week in Rewind spotlights some of the editorial work of the Bronx Times for the week of July 10-14
Advocates for Fordham Road bus lane changes continue to push city
Advocates for better bus service on Fordham Road are not giving up.
In late May, the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) announced intentions to move forward with offset bus lanes on Fordham Road instead of a busway — a more extreme measure for prioritizing bus service — just days after business leaders against both ideas wrote a letter to Mayor Eric Adams.
Transit advocates, particularly from Riders Alliance, were enraged by what they saw as Adams caving to wealthy critics who live in the suburbs and don’t rely on Bronx bus service.
Now, the activists want to make sure the offset lanes are actually installed — as soon as possible — and that a busway is studied further, Riders Alliance spokesperson Daniel Pearlstein told the Bronx Times.
After launching a petition on June 8 that Pearlstein said garnered more than 1,000 signatures and staging a protest on June 21 in animal and flower costumes mocking the local Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden — two of the businesses against the project — advocates are speaking out again on Tuesday.
At an 11 a.m. protest at Fordham Plaza, Riders Alliance will be joined by the MTA Chief Customer Officer Shanifah Rieara, Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, Laborers’ Local 1010, New York Public Interest Research Group Straphangers Campaign, Transportation Alternatives and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.
The Bx12, which traverses Fordham Road, is the busiest route in the Bronx, and the second busiest citywide, according to a March 2022 MTA and DOT presentation. The road is a crucial crosstown connector in the Bronx, but it’s riddled with congestion, parking issues and vehicles blocking bus lanes, leaving sluggish bus speeds. The route serves 85,000 riders daily.
Kingsbridge Heights man, on the run for more than a decade, sentenced to 18 years for killing wife
Almost 13 years to the date after Hector Ramirez killed his wife in front of their then-9-year-old son in Kingsbridge Heights, he was sentenced for her murder.
According to an announcement by the Bronx District Attorney’s office, Ramirez, 42, was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter last month and sentenced to 18 years in prison on Monday.
The investigation states that on Aug. 29, 2010, Ramirez stabbed his wife Ella Zamora, 28, in the chest inside their Kingsbridge Heights apartment after she tried to kick him out following an argument. She died later at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and her son — who witnessed the altercation between his parents — was taken into care by Zamora’s sister.
According to the television show America’s Most Wanted, Ramirez had accused Zamora of infidelity.
The case went cold as Ramirez fled the state and had been on the run for more than a decade, until he was finally apprehended in Las Vegas in February 2022 and extradited to the Bronx, according to the district attorney’s office.
According to an archived 2010 web page on America’s Most Wanted website, police were searching for Ramirez with possible locations in Mexico, where he is from, New York, where he moved to, and Salem, Oregon, where his sister lived at the time.
Ramirez was first indicted by a grand jury in September 2017 and charged with murder in the second degree, manslaughter in the first degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree.
He was convicted of Zamora’s murder by a jury trial in Bronx Supreme Court on June 5.
Just what the doctor ordered: ‘Food prescription’ program to help 100 Bronxites access fresh produce in NYC launch
A pilot program in the Bronx is testing out what it would be like if doctors could prescribe produce to patients in the city’s unhealthiest borough.
At 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Stop & Shop, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM), the About Fresh company and Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson were scheduled to announce the launch of the program at the 2136 Bartow Ave. Stop & Shop in the Bay Plaza Mall in Co-op City.
Fresh Connect, an About Fresh program, is launching in New York state for the first time through a Bronx pilot that will provide produce to 100 families for six months.
The select families will receive pre-paid $100 debit cards each month of the pilot that can only buy fresh fruit and vegetables at any Stop & Shop grocery store, Stop & Shop spokesperson Daniel Wolk and Josh Trautwein, co-founder and CEO of Fresh Connect, told the Bronx Times.
The “food prescription program” empowers people to buy the foods they need to be healthy through money and flexibility, Wolk said.
Participants were identified by pediatricians and Community Health Workers through Montefiore’s social needs screening, which the medical center conducts at its primary care locations, or through CHAM’s Adolescent Eating Disorder Group.
The Fresh Connect food prescription program began as part of About Fresh’s Fresh Truck mobile food market with paper coupons that could be used at the truck, Trautwein told the Bronx Times. In 2018, the company decided to develop a new payment method — the pre-paid debit cards — that could function across a network of retailers.
The program has two parts: stores that accept the debit cards and organizations willing to fund them.
Meet the Bronx’s Nelly Cruz: An up and coming social media influencer with a passion for mental health
Nelly Cruz, or as she’s better known “Nellybillz,” is a 19-year-old social media influencer who began working on her craft after she dropped out of college in 2021 while struggling with her mental health.
But while she’s relatively new to the influencer sphere, Cruz told the Bronx Times her aspirations to be a social media star came from her childhood.
“I always had a dream since I was a little girl to be famous,” the Bronxite said.
Cruz began posting TikTok content during college, discussing relevant topics at the time such as the controversial Netflix show “Dahmer.” But even amidst her increase in popularity while at school, Cruz still struggled with the unfamiliar setting of college and the lack of social comfortability — she said not only her studies, but also the feeling of homesickness was hard to overcome. She soon fell into a depression, and decided to drop out of college.
“Everyone knows about COVID,” Cruz said. “(In that period) I fell into big depression and went to college upstate … I went six hours away from home so it was really hard for me to get adjusted to the community.”
What seemed like a deep pit at the time, however, actually became a means for her to pursue social media full time. After she left school, her career flourished and her mental health began to improve.
Cruz continued using TikTok, a social media application that specializes in bite-sized algorithm-based content, to really begin her journey toward fame. She became inspired by other influencers by surfing through her TikTok feed and aspiring to do what they did — but better. She has amassed more than 68,000 followers on TikTok since 2021, and 166,000 followers on Instagram. TikTok was Cruz’s first platform, but she quickly moved on to YouTube to expand her horizons.
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