Genesee County residents were once again generous in their giving for the annual WBTA/Ken Barrett Chevrolet Toy Drive on Friday. The Salvation Army will distribute the gifts to area children.
The two views of Isaac D. Abrams, 23, expressed by attorneys in Genesee County Court on Thursday, couldn't be more different.
For Assistant District Attorney Robert Zickl, Abrams is a young man given many breaks in his run of criminal activity since he was a teen who has gone from making threats to actual violence. He belongs in prison.
To Michael Dwan, a Buffalo-based attorney hired by the Abrams family, the young Tonawanda Indian Reservation resident is an entrepreneur, a leader with a promise of potential to make a positive impact on his community who has made unfortunate decisions in his desire to help the people he cares about. Another prison could destroy any hope of a productive future for Abrams.
On Thursday, Judge Thomas Williams (filling for Judge Melissa Lightcap Cianfrini, who recused herself because of a possible conflict of interest, though that conflict was not disclosed) gave no verbal explanation for his sentence other than to say it was a "very difficult" decision.
He sent Abrams to prison. On a conviction, via guilty plea for burglary, he sent Abrams to prison for two years. On his robbery conviction, also via a guilty plea, he sent Abrams to prison for one to three years. The sentences are to be served concurrently.
Criminal Past
The chain of events, at least as documented in arrest reports that led to the new prison terms, began in August 2017 when Abrams threatened to shoot State troopers and county deputies on the reservation and then, the next month threatened to seriously injure or kill another person while driving a vehicle in the area of Tim Hortons in Batavia.
Abrams entered guilty pleas to making a terrorist threat and reckless endangerment in the first degree.
Judge Charles Zambito sent him to prison.
"I went through horrible experiences," Abrams told The Batavian in September 2022 about his time in prison. "I have scars on my eyebrows now that are permanent. I have stab wounds on my back and my shoulders. I went from prison to prison. It was a horrible, horrible experience."
In July 2019, Abrams was arrested again, accused of threatening a person with a baseball bat. The Batavian doesn't have a record of the disposition of that case.
In Sept. 2022, Abrams was in front of Cianfrini to be sentenced on a burglary charge. After much consideration, Cianfrini spared Abrams a prison term and gave him a chance to get help through the Mental Health Court.
That break allowed Abrams to return to his entrepreneurial dreams and his new smoke shop.
Abrams was grateful for the break.
"She honestly changed my life around," Abrams told The Batavian at the time. "I thank her for helping me. She did a lot. Honestly, I wouldn't be here in these shoes. I wouldn't be free today," he said. "I wouldn't be thinking clearly. I would have done none of that. I would have nothing. I'd probably still be that broken little shit."
Second Chances, New Challenges
In that interview, Abrams talked about how there were people around him who wanted him to fail and who didn't want to see him lead a straight life.
"This would be the bad crowd," he said, "like the alcoholics, the drunks, the ones who like to stay out all night."
The night after the interview, two people tried to set his small shop on fire. About two weeks later, Brandi L. Reuben and Garrett S. Porter were arrested and charged with arson. Reuben's case is pending in County Court. Porter's case status is not available.
But that arson, Abrams said, was an example of a lesson learned. Rather than try to take matters into his own hands, he called the police and let them handle the investigation and eventual arrest.
According to Dwan's description of the two latest arrests, Abrams didn't call authorities. He did try to take matters into his own hands.
Dwan describes the burglary charge as Abrams trying to protect his mother, entering the residence of her boyfriend, catching him in the act of hitting his brother, and then attacking the boyfriend. That description is very similar to the case Abrams was sentenced on by Cianfrini in 2022.
In the robbery case, Abrams was asked to go along with some friends to visit a smokeshop where a person there owed one of them some money. Abrams said he thought he could help smooth things out by being the voice of reason. Another, who has never been identified by police and never arrested, is the one who actually carried out all of the acts that led to robbery charges, according to Dwan.
"We're uncertain who was involved, and everyone involved is unwilling to name him," Dwan said. "My client is the only one facing any consequences over what happened in that store, and I believe he was minimally involved."
But Abrams was there as a participant, and although Abrams denies doing exactly what the arresting officer says he did, his mere participation, Dwan indicated, would lead to a jury convicting Abrams of a robbery, hence the guilty plea.
Dwan said Abrams could be a young man with a promising future. He has a stable relationship with a girlfriend, and they have a newborn child together. His mother was in court to support him.
"There's a very good chance he's going to do very well in this world," Dwan said. "There is a good chance that by the time he's 40, we'll all look at him with respect. If he's sent to prison, his future may be damaged in ways that will make it harder for him to succeed. He's going to state prison as a Native American. As we all know, prison is segmented by race, and as a Native American, he will be alone. He's a big guy, so he may be alright, but nobody will hang with him. He was stabbed the last time he was there."
Remorse
Abrams sobbed while addressing Williams, expressing remorse for his poor decisions.
He said it was not his intent to commit crimes.
"I tried to help people and I should really have just said, 'no," Abrams said. "I feel bad. I feel really bad about the robbery. If I could take it all back I would."
He said he would take his punishment, whatever was coming, that he should never have been at the dispensary, that he should have called the cops, and he was scared about going back to prison.
"I apologize to everyone for being here and making myself look like a fool," Abrams said.
Zickl argued for prison because, to him, it seemed like the young man's criminal activity was escalating, and that Abrams has a history of minimizing his own culpability. He argued that Abrams took an active role in the dispensary robbery.
"Mr. Abrams has demonstrated he neither appreciates nor can he take advantage of the positive considerations and benefits he's been given along the way," Zickl said. "His behavior becomes more aggressive and worrying and violent."
For The Batavian's previous coverage of Abrams, click here.
The folk tradition of music and art in Ireland informs the work of Batavia artist Adrian Morris, featured in the Winter Show of the Batavia Society of Artists at the Richmond Memorial Library.
The show opened Thursday and features 35 paintings by Morris, both his Irish landscapes and his portraits of musicians, writers, political figures, and commissioned work.
'I'm painting every day, painting all the time, in my spare time," Morris said. "It's just, I can't stop doing it. It's a passion that I've had from a young age."
In 2008, Morris immigrated to the Batavia area to be with a woman from the area. He is with a new lady now, but he stayed and has become embedded in the local art community. His works are included in showings regularly with the BSA and at GO ART!
His Irish accent is unmistakable, as is his love for his homeland, but his love for America's musical traditions is also expressed through his work. His portraits on display in the show include Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, John Lennon, Neil Young, and three of Johnny Cash.
What is the fascination with The Man in Black?
"Because I'm Irish," Morris answered. "And we're into folk music, traditional folk music, and he takes a lot of bluegrass and folk stuff into his music. I love folk music, like (Bob) Dylan and Johnny Cash and all those guys, you know. There is honesty in their songs and the stories that they tell. It's all about storytelling."
One of Morris's most stunning pieces is a portrait of James Joyce, the early 20th-century novelist known for his often inscrutable prose and stories deeply rooted in his native Dublin.
All these decades after Joyce's death, with his legacy enshrined in the scholarship of great literature, it might be hard to see Joyce as a folk figure, but that is how Morris sees him, and what draws him to Joyce.
"If you're in Dublin -- Ulysses is set in Dublin -- you can literally track every part of the book," Morris said. "You can go along the train, ride along the train along the coast, and everything he described in the book is in Dublin, and his cadence of the people (in the book), the way they talk, is purely Irish. A lot of Americans say it's very hard to read, but for me, it's just like, it's, it's my tone, the way their slang words work, you know, it's a rhythm and a regional accent to Dublin, it's very Dublinesque, and, and so that's the beauty of his prose."
Joyce, he said, brings the complexities of life into a real world of real people just trying to get through their daily lives, like any folk artist.
"He goes through the gamut of philosophy and life and all these things, but he does it in a common man's way," Morris said. "You know what I mean? There's no airs about him."
Morris's love of Ireland and folk traditions is also expressed in a portrait that might surprise some -- Frederick Douglass.
"Frederick Douglass is a big he's a big part of Ireland," Morris said. "Anti-slavery with the whole British thing, the colonization, so he was a big part of it. He was about the abolishment of slavery and so I really respected him even before coming here, and little did I know respecting him as a child that he was such a part of Rochester and the area. I was just like, 'Wow. So I felt like I wanted to pay tribute to him."
In Ireland, Douglass is revered for a speech he gave there.
"I don't know if it's true, but some Irish people had some part in paying for his freedom (NOTE: Irish and British residents raised the 150 pounds to purchase his freedom)," Morris said. "When he went over there, he moved the Irish people so much, that might have sown the seed for them to launch a free country because they were under the rule of the British for so long, and they wanted their freedom. So it's a political thing, but it's rooted in my culture."
The BSA Winter Show is on display through December and is open during regular library hours.
Three visions of art and nature are on display in the Roz Steiner Art Gallery at Genesee Community College through the end of January, featuring WNY artists David Burke, Julie A. Lambert, and Steve Piper.
The exhibit, which is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed the day after Christmas), is called "Handicraft Habitat."
Burke, a Bergen resident, said his work for this show is a mixture of realism and abstraction, mostly in acrylic.
"They're all inspired by nature," he said.
A father who homeschooled his children, he earned an art degree from SUNY Brockport and, in 2015, decided that art was his true passion and the vocation he wanted to pursue for the rest of his life. He's involved in the Batavia Society of Artists and GO ART! and has won numerous awards locally for his work.
His work for the show is described as inspired not just by nature but "his connection to the life of the earth and the mystery of the world. (He) uses light, shadow, color, and composition to evoke memories and emotions."
Over the past few years, he's explored "intuitive painting," a process whereby the artist "goes with the flow," laying down lines and colors as his whim or emotions or imagination dictates.
"I've been experimenting a lot more with abstraction and intuitive painting, not knowing what I'm going to do, just starting off and painting," Burke said. "Whatever comes out of me comes out, which turns out pretty nice most of the time. I never know what's gonna happen. It's really interesting."
Burke made it into the show by applying for an exhibit several months ago.
"I just applied and then forgot about it," Burke said. "Then a few weeks ago, (the director) called me and said, 'You want to have a show?' The other two people in the show are friends of mine, which I had no idea about, so it turned out really nice. It's great because I went to school here originally back in 1975. It's kind of nice to have and show and be back at GCC."
The other artists on display are Lambert and Piper.
Lambert is a master papermaker. She has a bachelor's of fine arts from SUNY Oswego. According to the program, her work explores the natural and human-created impacts on landscape. To the surprise of the viewer, Lambert’s works are often first mistaken for paintings. As viewers are drawn in, they realize that the works of art are individual pieces of handmade paper -- dyed, textured, cut, torn, and layered by the artist to express how she sees the world.
Piper is originally from Kansas and moved to Rochester in 1978 to pursue a photography degree at RIT. His artistic vision, according to the program, is inspired by his rural life growing up in the mid-west. Through color, texture, and composition, he is able to take a recognizable image and create something representational.
Photos by Howard Owens.
State Police are looking for a person involved in the theft of a Brimar Dump Trailer in the Town of Pembroke earlier this week.
Trooper Brian Pritchett provided these photos, which show both the suspect and suspect vehicle, and asked anybody with information that may assist in the investigation to call State Police Batavia at 585-344-6200. If needed, the case number is #11744594.
Pritchett said there has been a series of trailer thefts in the area recently. This one occurred on Nov. 22 at 1:39 a.m.
The suspect appears to be a white male wearing a white hoodie. The truck appears to be a possible older black diesel Dodge pickup with a white Blizzard Plow on the front.
"The truck is unique, and hopefully someone will recognize it," Pritchett said.
Sydney Reilly scored 21 points and Lydia Ross scored 20 to lead the Elba Lancers to their second win in three games on Friday.
The Lancers beat Barker 69-17.
Coach Charlie Pangrazio said, "The Lady Lancers played solid defense and had balanced scoring."
The first 15 minutes is when emergency responders have the best chance of saving lives during an active threat -- that incident where a bad actor, or multiple perpetrators, have undertaken hostile actions.
Local cops, firefighters, and medics worked together at St. Anthony's on Thursday to participate in active threat training to learn how to coordinate a quick response to neutralize a threat and perform emergency medical procedures.
"An active threat can be anything and everything from a single shooter to a complex coordinated attack on a facility or building or structure with an intended target," said Don Birou, lead instructor for the training course. "The goal here is as they have something that has occurred, they respond to it, and then they have to respond to save the lives that we put in front of them."
Birou is with the National Center for Biomedical Research and Training Academy and Counter-Terrorism, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based contractor with Homeland Security.
This is the first time this sort of training has been conducted in Genesee County.
"We want law enforcement to come in, eliminate the threat, get the rescue task force in here and get those victims out of here to a hospital in a very short timeframe," Birou said. "It's a coordinated event among all the agencies. This is not like a single agency stuff. This is police, fire, and EMS working as one. In order to make that happen, they have to train on those aspects and try to get used to it."
Thursday's training included deputies from the Sheriff's Office, Batavia police officers, Batavia firefighters, Mercy EMS medics, and the Office of Emergency Management. In the photos, police are in blue vests, medical and fire personnel in red, trainers in orange, and observers in green.
Emergency Management Coordinator Tim Yaeger said the impetus for the training came from school districts looking to ensure first responders were ready to deal with not only an active shooter but other kinds of immediate hostile threats.
Law enforcement frequently trains on neutralizing threats, but such training does not typically include fire and EMS responders and coordinate with them during a critical time frame when lives can be saved but the scene is still chaotic, and officers can't be 100 percent certain a threat has been fully neutralized.
One officer participating in the training said he was grateful to go through it because he did find that when the scenario switched from putting down a shooter to dealing with victims, he became more nervous and realized he didn't have enough experience with that aspect of active threat situation.
"Law enforcement is often ahead of fire and EMS, and they're very prepared to respond to those things, but this is not a tactical SWST response," Yaeger said. "This is the patrol officers that are in the field, they have to respond immediately and take out that threat. This program helps us set the baseline to integrate fire, EMS, and dispatch so we're all on the same page, we're all talking about the same terminology and what our job duties are, how we're going to perform."
Yaeger emphasized that the first 10 or 15 minutes is the most critical period for saving the lives of victims so responders need to work quickly and with as little confusion as possible about how to communicate, what to communicate, and what role each plays to "stop the bleeding."
"It sounds simplistic, but it isn't," Yaeger said. "It's very, very complex, especially when you're dealing with law enforcement at the time when they may not know is that one shooter, multiple shooters, you know, or is that a complex coordinated attack?"
This is just the first such training but more is planned, Yaeger said, including a full-scale exercise sometime in 2024, possibly at GCC or one of the other schools in the county.
The scenarios used in the training are true-to-reality, Birou said, taken from after-incident reports of actual attacks and mass casualty events.
"The training is best practices," Birou said. "How do we respond to these kinds of incidents, and what's the best method for accomplishing our task of saving lives?"
Photos by Howard Owens
With 17 points in the final quarter, Byron-Bergen notched a 59-56 win over Attica on Thursday evening.
Braedyn Chambry scored 21 points for the Bees. Brody Baubie scored 13, and Colin Martin scored nine.
Jack Janes scored 19 for Attica.
The Bees are now 3-0 on the year.
Photos by Jennifer DiQuattro
Alexander improved to 3-1 in Boys Basketball with a 60-38 win over Elba (1-1) at Elba on Thursday night.
Dylan Pohl scored 16 points for the Trojans, with King Woods scoring 13 and Trent Woods scoring 11.
For the Lancers, Angelo Penne scored 16 and Mike Long scored 11.
Photos by Debra Reilly.
A motor vehicle accident is reported in the area of 4028 West Main Street Road, Batavia.
There was an initial report of entrapment, but a male victim is now said to be out of the vehicle, in the roadway, holding his head, moving, and breathing.
Traffic is blocked.
Town of Batavia Fire and Mercy EMS dispatched.
UPDATE 4:45 p.m.: A scene commander asked to check on the availability of Mercy Flight. Mercy Flight is unavailable.
UPDATE 4:46 p.m.: A second advance life support ambulance is being dispatched, emergency response, is dispatched.
UPDATE 5:15 p.m.: Town of Batavia Fire is back in service.
H.E. Turner & Co. Funeral Home's annual Remembrance Service was held at Northgate Free Methodist Church on Wednesday.
The service is an opportunity for area residents to honor and remember loved ones who have passed.
Pastor Vern Saile led the service.
Photos by Howard Owens.
Opening at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, the Batavia Players bring to life Scrooge and his ghosts in a performance of Charles Dickens's “A Christmas Carol” at Main St. 56 Theater in Batavia.
There are also performances on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Tickets are $18 for adults and $16 for seniors.
The musical is directed by Patrick Burk, with music directed by Kathy White.
Photos by Howard Owens
Alexander beat Elba on Wednesday in Girls Basketball 72-65.
No stats were submitted for the game.
Photos by Debra Reilly.
Going up against defending Class B champions Waterloo, the Notre Dame Girls Basketball Team came up a little short on points to fall 61-58 on Wednesday.
The Lady Irish were led by Freshman Sofia Falleti, who dominated with a double-double of 26 points and 11 rebounds.
Also contributing to the Irish were senior Nina Bartz with 14 points and Emma Sisson with 10 points and eight rebounds.
Photos by Pete Welker.
From Medieval times through the Renaissance, the classical period, and into modern carols, Christmas music has changed to reflect the times. On Saturday, at St. James Episcopal Church, the Genesee Chorale will take listeners through that journey in a program entitled "Christmas Through the Ages."
"We're going to go through the process of the beginning of Christmas carols back in the 1400s and then work our way up," said Musical Director and Conductor Ric Jones. "It's a wide mix of styles and in music, a lot of things that will be familiar, some that there'll be new."
Jones said he expects the audience to find the performance as entertaining as it is beautiful.
"The whole concert begins with Gregorian chants so that's really cool," Jones said. "We have four instrumentalists. They're gonna be joining us on about six different pieces, so they'll really liven things up. We have some great, really cool arrangement of "Jingle Bells." It's a rearrangement of the Barbra Streisand version of Jingle Bells written for choir. That's a lot of fun. And then "Joy to the World," "Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending" -- there's some really beautiful, large moving pieces as well."
The concert also isn't without its challenges for the choir, which should also impress listeners.
"The biggest challenging piece is probably "Here We Come A-wassailing," which is a traditional song, but it's super challenging for the choir," Jones said. "It's seven verses, and every verse gets more and more intricate. So it begins with the choir in unison and as we progress, it gets more and more integrated, and it breaks out into eight different parts of one point. So they're going to do great on that."
Jones said he always looks forward to the traditional Christmas concert because, for him, it signals the beginning of the season.
"You get into the mood and the spirit," Jones said. "Also, they're always well attended. They're always popular concerts because people just people want to hear great music at Christmastime."
The Genesee Chorale will perform Christmas Through the Ages 4 p.m. on Saturday at St. James Episcopal Church. For more information, click here. To purchase tickets, click here.
Photos by Howard Owens.
Le Roy voters on Tuesday approved a $12.5 million capital improvement project that will fund facilities repairs and a new multipurpose sports field.
There were 517 residents who turned out for the vote, passing the measure 323 to 194.
Superintendent Merritt Holly said, "Thank you to all district residents who came out to vote."
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