Two more youths have been arrested in a shootout that erupted in a residential part of Peabody, Massachusetts, last week, police say.
No one was hurt in the exchange of gunfire on Littles Lane on the evening of Tuesday, May 21, police have said. A …
Massachusetts
Famed Sally’s Apizza is planning several more Boston-area locations
[This story first appeared on Boston Restaurant Talk.]
An award-winning Connecticut pizzeria that recently expanded into the Greater Boston area and is currently working on another location will also be opening two, and possibly three, more outlets locally.
The Tables section of The Boston Globe is reporting that Sally’s Apizza is planning to open new outlets in Dorchester and Concord, while the website for Sally’s mentions that another in Burlington is apparently coming as well. It looks like the first two are slated to debut in 2025, with the Concord location opening on Route 2 where a location of Papa Razzi had been and the Dorchester location coming to South Bay (it isn’t yet known where or when the Burlington location might be opening).
The new outlets of the pizzeria will be joining one in Woburn which opened last December while another is coming to Boston’s Seaport District sometime in 2025.
Sally’s Apizza first opened in New Haven in 1938 and is one of a few pizzerias in that city–including Pepe’s and Modern–that have gained national recognition for their pizza. The website for Sally’s Apizza is at sallysapizza.com.
[A related post from our sister site (Boston’s Hidden Restaurants): List of Restaurant Closings and Openings in the Boston Area]
Please help keep Boston Restaurant Talk and Boston’s Hidden Restaurants going by making a one-time contribution or via a monthly subscription. Thanks! (Donations are non-deductible.)
Why so many butt dials? Who called who and when in the Karen Read case
After 18 days of testimony, the jury in the Karen Read murder trial has been presented with an enormous amount of information.
Prosecutors say Read dropped her boyfriend John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, off at a house party hosted by a fellow officer, Brian Albert, in January 2022, struck him with her SUV and then drove away. But her defense team says she was framed and O’Keefe was beaten inside the home and left outside.
One question about the case that we keep hearing from viewers is who called who and when?
Here’s our breakdown of that testimony so far.
So far, three witnesses called by the prosecution have testified they either placed a call or answered one but didn’t mean to.
They are Albert, Jennifer McCabe and Brian Higgins — three key players in this trial. All of them described the calls as “butt dials.”
Phone records provided by the defense show there are a total of nine calls unaccounted for.
Let’s start with Albert. He was the first to use the term “butt dial.”
Albert testified that he had his phone with him in bed on the night of O’Keefe’s death and admits he was awake at the time.
The defense, comparing call logs, asked him about a one second call placed on his phone to Higgins at 2:22 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, just hours before O’Keefe’s body was found in Albert’s yard.
“I butt dial people often and make inadvertent calls,” Albert testified. “I could have hit a last call from him by accident.”
Albert was shown previous testimony where he gave a possible explanation for the butt dial given what was happening at the time. He said that he was in bed and involved in an intimate situation with his wife.
Higgins would go on to testify that he didn’t answer that inadvertent call from Albert. But that’s not the only unexplained call between the two.
The defense pointed to a second call made just 17 seconds after the first. That call came from Higgins’ phone and lasted 22 seconds. When asked about that call, Higgins also mentioned a butt dial.
Again, the defense brought up Higgins’ testimony from a prior hearing, where his answer about making that second call was different. He said he did call Albert back, but they didn’t have a conversation.
Albert was also asked to explain that call from Higgins that he said he didn’t answer.
“My wife was in the room with me and we were hanging out and I never got the second call from him,” he said.
Phone records show more calls were made between them. The defense asked Albert about the phone calls he made after O’Keefe’s body was found in his front yard. The first call he made was to Higgins.
“I informed him about what was going on at my house,” Albert testified.
Now to McCabe, who also testified she placed some inadvertent calls — seven in total — to O’Keefe’s phone.
At 12:14 and 12:18 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, she testified that she and O’Keefe spoke by phone. But the next series of calls are unaccounted for — seven calls between 12:29 and 12:50 a.m.
“I don’t remember making any of those calls, so my assumption is I put my phone in my back pocket and that was it,” she testified.
Records of those missed calls came from an extraction of O’Keefe’s phone. The records of those calls appeared to have been deleted from McCabe’s phone.
Once more the defense pushed back, leaving jurors to infer a possible explanation for the flurry of calls McCabe denies making. They raised the possibility that the series of seven calls might have been made in an attempt to find O’Keefe’s phone.
There is no testimony in the Read trial for the remainder of the week. A full day of testimony is expected on Monday when the case resumes.
U-Haul used in attempted ATM theft in Dorchester, police say
Boston police are investigating an attempted ATM theft in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood early Thursday morning.
Officers responded to the area of Talbot and Southern avenues just before 6 a.m. for a report of a robbery in progress, B…
Cambridge School Committee votes to fire superintendent
Cambridge Public Schools is now in need of a brand new superintendent.
The school committee voted Wednesday night to part ways with current Superintendent Victoria Greer.
The Boston Globe reports that the move comes about a year before her contr…
Boston-bound flight averts runway collision at Reagan National Airport
American Airlines passengers on a Boston-bound flight were forced to land after another aircraft nearly collided with them.
The Federal Aviation Administration is now investigating what led up to the averted collision.
Two incidents at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, involved Boston-bound planes that had to abort their take-off.
The first incident happened back on April 18. An air traffic controller at Reagan instructed a Southwest Airlines flight to cross a runway, while a Boston-bound JetBlue flight was starting to takeoff from the same runway.
The JetBlue flight aborted takeoff and there was no collision and no injuries.
On Wednesday, air traffic controllers cleared a Boston-bound American Airlines flight for takeoff at 10:30 a.m., while a smaller King Air plane was cleared to land on an intersecting runway.
The American Airlines plane had reached speeds of about 100 miles an hour when air traffic controllers ordered the pilot to abort takeoff.
“American 2134, cancel takeoff clearance! Zero, Alpha, Alpha, go around, go around!”
“Rejecting the takeoff, 2134.”
“Zero, Alpha, Alpha cannot go around, we were already on the ground.”
“American 2134, do you want to go back to the gate?”
“Yeah, we need to talk to maintenance but yeah, I think we were above 80 knots, so we’re going to have to get an inspection.”
The FAA is investigating the incident, saying in a statement, “An air traffic controller cancelled the takeoff clearance for American Airlines Flight 2134 because another aircraft was cleared to land on an intersecting runway at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.”
“The safety of our customers and team members is our top priority, and we’re grateful to our crew for their professionalism. We will support the FAA in its investigation,” said an American Airlines spokesperson.
The FAA said after the first incident that air traffic controllers are at high-risk for fatigue because of scheduling issues and staff shortages. However, it’s unclear if that played a role in either incident.
