An accident, believed to be with minor injuries, is reported in the area of 8703 Lake Street Road, Le Roy.
Le Roy fire and Le Roy ambulance responding.
Traffic is being shut down at West Bergen Road.
A community gathered to come to grips with the loss of one of their own Monday night at Alexander High School in the wake of the death of 17-year-old Brian West Jr.
"We're going to struggle for a while," said Andrew Young, a father of an Alexander student and athlete. "You need to have conversations you’re not used to having. You need talk with your parents. You need to talk with each other. If you don't, you're going to struggle longer than you should."
A group of classmates brought 17 sky lanterns as a way to honor and remember Brian.
"I didn’t know him the best," said one of the girls involved, "but he always had a smile on his face. Since he lived the best 17 years any kid could, we bought 17 paper lanterns."
After a few words by Young and Tim Sawyer, an Alexander teacher and head football coach, the students went down onto the football field and launched the lanterns.
Sawyer encouraged the kids not to take anything for granted.
"What if life were all good?" Sawyer said. "What if we never had an injury? What if we never broke a bone? What if we didn’t have death? What if there was no hunger? What if there were no broken relationships? Would we appreciate any of it? I’m just saying, life is a struggle and we can’t feel cheated by it. I think it’s part of life, and death, it seems final, but if things were good all the time, would we appreciate anything?"
Matt McCracken recalled a game last season just after Brian's grandfather died. The family was devastated, he said, and Brian already had an injured ankle. The opponent that week was Attica, and Brian played.
"He shows up on Friday night and plays the game of his life, and Brian Sr. and Jr., afterward, I’ve never seen a father and son that close, that happy, and that’s something I’ll remember forever," McCracken said.
Then McCracken turned his attention to a group of teens who came through the grades with Brian and pointed to the community of support around them.
"We're a small community and something like this hits us especially hard," McCracken said. "Don’t forget there are people who care about you."
It's important, Sawyer said, that the community supports each other and the community supports the parents of Brian, Brian Sr., and Jen, but in coming together Monday night, they were doing that.
"I don’t know how long this was going on social media that this was going to happen tonight, two or three hours, but there are a couple of hundred people here, and this is a little town," Sawyer said. "This is a little community. People look out for each other. People share other people’s sorrows. Guys, if it was good and happy and rosy all the time, I don’t know that we would all appreciate each other the way we do."
Previously:
A one-vehicle rollover is reported at 24 W. Main St., Corfu.
The car may have struck a house.
There were four occupants in the vehicle. The caller believes all are uninjured.
A chief on scene says Mercy EMS can continue non-emergency.
Corfu fire on scene.
There is a hydrant at the location that was sheared off.
Brian West Jr. loved people, and people loved him, according to Tim Sawyer, head coach of Alexander High School's football team.
He packed a lot of living into his 17 years, Sawyer said. Friends, family, and football.
Early this morning, Brian West died at Strong Memorial Hospital from injuries sustained in a single-vehicle rollover accident on West Bethany Road on the Bethany/Alexander town line, just yards from his home.
Sawyer wasn't just Brian's coach. He had known him his entire life. Sawyer and Brian's father grew up next door to each other, were best friends and Sawyer also knew Brian's mother since high school and Brian's grandmother is Sawyer's neighbor.
Besides football, Brian liked to hunt and fish and ride ATVs, just like Sawyer and his dad when they were growing up together.
"He was a lot like his dad in that way," Sawyer said.
Brian was one of the nicest kids you could meet.
"I think his relationships meant a lot to him," Sawyer said. "His friends, his teammates, his family. He always had a smile on his face and wanted to have a good time while he was around people."
He was part of the Trojan's first-ever Section V champion team last year. He planned to pursue a career in law enforcement. (Click here for his obituary).
The cause of the accident is under investigation, and with Brian's death, it may be hard to determine. As of last night, investigators said there were few clues at the scene.
Brian was northbound on West Bethany Road and lost control of his Chevy Avalanche after coming over the crest of a hill. The truck swerved, partially left the roadway on the west shoulder, and as Brian seemed to bring it back to the road surface, it flipped over. It may have rolled over twice. Brian was ejected and landed in a neighbor's driveway. He was alert and conscious when first responders arrived and that seemed to provide hope to everybody at the scene that he would survive the crash.
He died this morning at Strong at 5:20 a.m.
Brian was a good football player, Sawyer said. He excelled as a defensive lineman but played mostly as an offensive tackle this past season because of a pre-season ankle injury. Sawyer said he was too valuable on offense to risk playing both ways every game.
"He was almost like a Dustin Schmieder type of kid," Sawyer said. "He wouldn't have come off the field this year for me."
Recently Brian ran a 4.96 40-yard dash.
"We were looking at him possibly playing tight end for us this year," the coach said.
Brian loved athletics and he loved to compete, Sawyer said.
The Alexander football team works out together in the weight room during the offseason, and tonight is no exception.
"We're a really close-knit community and our team is no different," Sawyer said. "As a team, we'll try to wrap our hands around this and I'll talk a little bit about life and how we all leave a legacy, if it's a good one or if it's a bad one. We all have got to make our time count. That's going to be my message to the boys. I'm going to tell them I love them. We lost a big part of our team today and as young men, as men, we've got to be able to deal with that stuff."
Sawyer also spent time today with Brian's parents. Before he went to their house, he said, he spent some time thinking about what he could say. It's hard to know what to say, he acknowledged.
"I said to Brian Sr., 'If God would have said 17 years ago, I will give you a son for 17 years and them I'm going to take him home, I think we would all take that deal if that were a good life, a life worth living,'" Sawyer said. "Maybe that's not the right perspective. I don't know. But he had a good 17 years."
Life doesn't always work in a storybook fashion. Not everything continues along perfectly, Sawyer said.
"As sad as it is, I choose to focus on the positive," Sawyer said. "The boy had a great life. Yes, it’s cut short, but he didn’t get cheated out of his 17 years."
Press release:
Noonan Drive will be closed on Thursday, July 13, between the hours of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. for cold milling operations.
While work is being performed in this area, the roadway will be closed to all through traffic. Local traffic will be permitted to and from their residence/property but should plan accordingly for delays.
All residents/businesses within the work area are asked not to park on the roadway during cold milling operations.
This is weather-dependent work. If work is postponed, it will progress next on the work day. Please, plan accordingly and contact the Bureau of Maintenance with any questions. Thank you for your cooperation in advance.
Chris Bauer, a member of the Explorer troop sponsored by Batavia PD, got to play the bad guy during a demonstration of police dog work at Batavia High School on Sunday evening.
Deputy Chris Erion and K-9 "Destro" showed the Explorers how a police dog takes down a criminal suspect, hunts for drugs, seeks out a human hiding from police, and can find fresh human scent.
In each scenario, Erion had a different pattern of commands and motions, and a different toy for Destro's reward, so Destro would know which task he was supposed to perform in which circumstance. Destro is motivated to get that toy, his favorite being an old piece of fire hose he gets after finding drugs.
Erion spoke with the students about the value of dogs in police work, which not only makes it easier to find drugs, evidence, and people, K-9s have a great calming effect in disturbances involving combative suspects.
Destro searching for drugs. He's close. The sample of meth was in the mate to this Nike sneaker.
Destro with his fire hose toy.
Erion with the tennis ball used when he wants Destro to search for fresh human scent. This search might be used to find an item a criminal suspect might have left behind while fleeing from a scene. We saw Destro display this skill in January 2014 when he found a note dropped by a robbery suspect near the crime scene.
Destro alerting on a wallet that had been dropped in the grass by one of the Explorers.
UPDATE 9:07 a.m.: The driver, Brian D. West Jr., 17, of West Bethany Road, died this morning at 5:20 a.m. as a result of injuries sustained in the crash.
A 17-year-old East Bethany resident was seriously injured tonight after he lost control of his pickup truck and it rolled over -- perhaps twice -- on West Bethany Road, near his home.
The youth, who was ejected from the truck, was flown by Mercy Flight to Strong Memorial Hospital. He was conscious and alert, and even trying to get up, when an Alexander fire chief first arrived at 10198 West Bethany Road.
"There is a hill rise to the south of us," said Sgt. Eric Seppala, explaining the sequence of events in the accident. "He was northbound. For some reason, he moved from his northbound lane to the southbound lane, went across it, went off the west shoulder of the road. The tires bit in and the vehicle rolled at least once and then continued and rolled to a stop. During that time, somewhere near the end, is when he was ejected from the vehicle through the driver’s side door window."
The cause of the accident, reported at 10:39 p.m., is under investigation, according to Seppala, but there is no indication at the scene of alcohol or mobile phone use prior to the accident.
Within the 100 yards or so from where the Chevy Avalanche appears to have started to swerve and cross over into the southbound lane to where it finally came to rest on its three remaining wheels, there are tire marks, deep gouges in the asphalt roadway, bits of metal from the truck, and a small field of auto glass.
Whether speed was a factor hasn't been determined, but traffic citations are possible, Seppala said.
Deputies were unable to speak with the youth before he was transported to Strong.
Seppala said it hasn't been determined yet if he was wearing a seat belt, but they suspect he wasn't.
There was a small fire in the truck when Alexander chiefs arrived on scene and they were able to put it out with portable extinguishers.
Deputy Howard Wilson is handling the accident investigation.
Alexander fire and Mercy EMS responded to the accident. Troopers also assisted at the scene.
The driver's name will be available once the Sheriff's Office completes its reports and issues a press release.
There was a car with a small fire in the car -- the fire may be out -- in the area of 1098 W. Bethany Road, Bethany.
An Alexander fire chief is on scene.
A man is down in a driveway.
Mercy Flight, with a 20-minute ETA out of Buffalo, is in route.
The Sheriff's Office dedicated two new signs in the garden outside the department's Park Road office this afternoon to the memory of William H. Johnson, who died in 1895, and Raymond F. Thompson, who died in 2002.
Pictured above, Deputy Brian Thompson on the left, with Undersheriff Greg Walker, and on the right, other members of the Thompson family with Sheriff William Sheron.
Brian Thompson is Raymond's brother. Raymond served eight years in the USAF in Security Police, then returned home, working in a couple of different manufacturing jobs before joining the Sheriff's Office as a corrections officer. He died on duty a few years later of a heart attack at the age of 37.
The dedication service comes on the third anniversary of the death of Deputy Frank Bordonaro, who is also honored with a sign in his memory in the garden.
The ceremony was followed by lunch for all in attendance, with hot dogs, hamburgers and sausage grilled by, from left, Undersheriff Greg Walker, Chief Deputy Jerry Brewster, and Sheriff Bill Sheron.
The Alexander Fire Department's annual carnival and tractor pull is back this weekend.
Today, the grounds open at 4 p.m. The kiddie parade is at 4 p.m. and pulls start at 7 p.m.
There will be music in the beer tent, starting at 9 p.m., with Red Creek.
The grounds close at 2 a.m.
The annual carnival dates back to 1938 and more than 22 years ago, the department added tractor pulls.
Top Photo: File photo.
Below, a photo by Nate Fix from the pull last night:
Local law enforcement is looking for a blue, four-door sedan with front and driver-side damage that investigators believe was the cause of an accident in Bergen last night that sent six people to the hospital.
The accident was reported at 9:15 in the area of 7762 Clinton Street Road.
The initial investigation by the Sheriff's Office indicates that the blue sedan passed a 2010 Dodge Grand Caravan unsafely and struck an eastbound 2010 Ford F150.
The collision forced the pickup truck off the road on the south shoulder where it came to rest facing north, resting on its passenger side.
The Caravan swerved to the right to avoid the collision and it traveled off the south shoulder, where it struck a large utility pole, continued west and struck a large tree.
Volunteer firefighters, when they arrived on scene, began a lengthy extrication to get the driver of the Caravan, Hailee N. Callicutt, of Prune Street, Batavia, out of the vehicle. She suffered a broken leg and was transported to Strong Memorial Hospital by Mercy Flight.
The five other passengers in the Caravan suffered minor injuries and were transported by ambulances to Strong.
No information was released on whether the driver of the pickup truck, John F. Gurtler, of Swamp Road, Bergen, was injured.
Responding to the scene were Bergen fire, Byron fire, Churchville fire, Le Roy ambulance, and Mercy EMS.
The accident is being investigated by Sgt. Jason Saile, Deputy Ryan DeLong, and Trooper Chad Bea.
To provide information about the blue sedan that may assist in the investigation, call the Sheriff's Office at (585) 343-5000.
Photo: Courtesy Alicia Kaus/Video News Service.
A motor-vehicle accident with possible entrapment is reported at 7762 Clinton Street Road, Bergen.
Bergen fire, Bergen ambulance and Mercy EMS dispatched.
There's a rollover and another vehicle reportedly struck a pole. Wires are reported down.
UPDATE 9:24 p.m.: Mercy Flight on ground standby.
UPDATE 9:25 p.m.: Confirmed, one person trapped.
UPDATE 9:26 p.m.: A second Mercy ambulance requested to the scene. Mercy Flight out of Olean is on in-air standby.
UPDATE 9:31 p.m.: Byron ambulance requested to the scene.
UPDATE 9:35 p.m.: Churchville requested to set up a landing zone at Dublin Road and Route 33 for Mercy Flight. Mercy Flight may be coming from Canandaigua.
UPDATE 9:41 p.m.: Landing zone changed to Farm Market at Route 33 and Route 19.
UPDATE 9:45 p.m.: Le Roy ambulance requested to the scene.
UPDATE 9:53 p.m.: Alexander ambulance requested to stand by in quarters because so many ambulances in the county are tied up at the moment.
UPDATE 9:55 p.m.: Darien ambulances requested to stand by in quarters. Four-minute ETA on Mercy Flight.
UPDATE 9:56 p.m.: An ambulance is in route to Strong with two patients.
UPDATE 9:58 p.m.: Bethany requested to have ambulance crew stand by in quarters.
UPDATE 10:03 p.m.: Mercy Flight on the ground.
UPDATE 10:07 p.m.: Churchville's engine requested to the scene with extrication tools.
UPDATE 10:29 p.m.: All victims extricated.
UPDATE 11:04 p.m.: Bergen back in service.
UPDATE: Video from the scene from our news partner 13WHAM.
UPDATE: Photos courtesy Alecia Kaus/Video News Service
Press release:
The Genesee County Economic Development Center (GCEDC) will consider approving incentives for three projects at its meeting on Thursday, July 13, in the Innovation Zone board room on 99 Medtech Drive, starting at 4 p.m.
The Board will vote on whether to approve incentives for a $7.1 million expansion for a new 40,000-square-foot warehouse and service center for West Seneca-based Freightliner Western Star.
The expansion will create 24 new jobs and the center will be located adjacent to the New York State Thruway and next door to the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership (GVEP).
The GVEP graduates are seen as an "ideal" workforce for the new facility. Freightliner Western Star is seeking approximately $662,000 in sales, mortgage and property tax exemptions.
The popular Coach Tony’s, which makes a wide variety of food sauces, is seeking to expand its operations in the Town of Bergen. The company is expanding and planning on constructing a 5,000-square-foot building on three acres at Apple Tree Acres. The project will create three new jobs. Coach Tony’s is seeking approximately $50,000 in sales, mortgage and property tax exemptions.
The third project for consideration by the GCEDC is a $170,749 GAIN! loan fund for First Light Creamery in East Bethany. The loan will be used to assist with its existing production of goats' milk cheese from local distribution to regional distribution by adding to their barn, and associated infrastructure, to house more goats.
The GCEDC Board meeting is open to the public.
Lady Irish Summer Mens League Week #2
HP Hood, the Lynnfield, Ma., dairy processor who is taking over the former Muller Quaker Dairy facility, already has human resources staff in Batavia so the company can start hiring immediately for its new dairy plant.
The company hopes to break ground on reconfiguring and expanding the plant this fall, and it won't be until early 2019 that the new plant is in production. But a source familiar with HP Hood's plans said the company is excited about coming to Batavia and is eager to start lining up its workforce.
People interested in applying for a job at the plant can call (1-800) 428-6329 for more information.
According to public documents, Hood plans to hire 250 people locally and expand the plant with a new 100,000-square-foot warehouse.
The source said details are still being worked out, but the plant will be used to manufacture extended-shelf-life beverages, both dairy and nondairy.
It's expected that Dairy Farmers of America, who initially purchased the plant from Muller Quaker for $60 million and held onto it until last Friday, when the cooperative sold the plant to Hood for $54 million, will be at least one of Hood's milk supplier. There are several DFA dairy farmers in the region.
There is still a lot of work and planning to do, but the source said that right now, Hood's focus is hiring a workforce for the plant.
Since DFA acquired the $206 million plant in December 2015, there have been seven to eight workers at the plant helping to keep it maintained and ready for the next producer. That staff has been offered jobs with Hood and our source believes all current workers accepted positions with Hood.
The source said the acquisition process has taken a year and now that the deal is closed, Hood executives are eager to see things move forward and get the plant into production.
Multiple sources have told The Batavian that staff for Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been trying to coordinate a visit by the governor to Batavia to celebrate the acquisition of the dairy plant by HP Hood. That could happen within the next couple of weeks.
Previously:
UPDATE: Here's a video about HP Hood:
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul and her husband, Bill, visited Batavia last night so they could attend a Batavia Muckdogs game together. Kathy threw out the first pitch and met with players from the Marlins in the Oakfield-Alabama Little League.
Catching Kathy's first pitch was Harrison White, from Laguna Beach, Calif., and a graduate of Yale University. He's a 2017 Miami Marlin's draft pick.
Genesee Cancer Assistance planted its Festival of Hope tree yesterday outside the Wilmot Cancer Institute on Bank Street, Batavia.
Participating were Bev Henning, Lois Gerace, Nickie Fazio, John Morrill and Ed Kirby.
Henning and Kirby are cancer survivors. Gerace is the wife of the late Joe Gerace, cofounder and former board member of Genesee Cancer Assistance. Fazio is with Genesee Cancer Assistance, and Morrill is owner of Bubba's Landscaping.
Below, Sue Underwood and Fazio hang ribbons for cancer survivors on the hydrangea tree.
The event was catered by Red Osier Landmark Restaurant in Stafford.
One of the Northeast's largest dairy producers now officially has a footprint in Batavia.
HP Hood, based in Lynnfield, Mass., closed on the deed to the former Muller Quaker Dairy plant on Friday, paying $54,216,000 to Dairy Famers of America for the facility.
DFA acquired the property from Muller Quaker in December 2015 for $60 million.
As part of the deal, Hood agreed to take over the obligations of Muller Quaker for the property, which includes making payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) along with paying a variety of fees to Genesee County Economic Development Center.
The GCEDC board has yet to improve a new PILOT agreement for the 363,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art milk processing facility, but is considering providing Hood with more than $7 million in tax abatements over 10 years, with an anticipated total economic benefit to the region of more than $330 million.
Hood will pay GCEDC $1.7 in annual installments of $280,000 over six years, starting with an initial payment delivered Friday at closing.
There is also an annual $1,000 administration fee and a $5,000 annual property maintenance fee to assist with maintenance of the Genesee Valley Agri-Business Park, where the plant is located (next to the Genesee County Fairgrounds on Route 5).
Hood is reportedly planning to add a 100,000-square-foot warehouse to what is already the largest dairy processing facility in the United States.
The plant cost PepsiCo and Theo Muller Group $206 million and Hood is planning to invest significantly more into the plant. Reconfiguring the plant from one that made just Quaker Muller's own take on Greek yogurt and adding the warehouse will create more than 500 construction jobs with a payroll of $26 million.
While Muller Quaker topped out at 162 jobs created, Hood promises 250 jobs at the plant, with an average annual salary of $47,000.
Hood plans to begin construction this summer and be operational by the first quarter of 2019.
Previously:
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