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What to know about Cranston, RI’s second largest city
In 2017, Cranston surpassed Warwick to become Rhode Island’s second largest city after Providence.
As Patty Jeffrey prepares for surgery on three broken bones, she can’t help thinking about how her life changed in an instant after being hit by a car on Budlong Road in Cranston on Sunday, Jan. 11.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” said Jeffrey, who is better known as the popular food blogger “Patty J” and “pattyjdotcom.”
Her livelihood is all about her adventures exploring Rhode Island, and its restaurants and cafes. Her Instagram account has nearly 44,000 followers. All that is on hold now as she is laid up with a broken ankle, broken lower fibula and broken toe.
Her whole blog life is finding activities and dining around the state, she said. The broken bones on her left leg and foot are “definitely a problem for what I do.”
Right now, she is home, keeping the leg and foot elevated as she awaits surgery on Friday. She needs help doing everything, she said. She is facing a recovery that could take a full year.
Jeffrey also finds herself frustrated by the fact that the hit-and-run driver has not come forward or been found.
“It all happened so fast,” she recounted about the crash.
It was a mild night about 5 p.m. when she and her husband Tom Paolino left their home to walk to Garden City. They had turned from Everett Road to Budlong Road.
“Cars do go fast on that road,” she said. “There was a long line of cars coming down the hill, where Dean Parkway becomes Budlong Road.”
They waited.
They were on the opposite side of the road from Seven Stars Bakery and Chelo’s when they began walking single file to go to the next corner.
“I took no more than five steps, and I heard myself say ‘What the …?’ Then it all went black. Next thing I know I hear my husband calling my name, “Patty Patty Patty.” He is in a daze and I tried to get up. My left shoe was off. I pulled myself to the sidewalk but I knew something was badly wrong with my leg.”
With her memory and witness observations, she said there was a car a block away pulling into Chelo’s. It was the vehicle behind that car, a grey or silver SUV with no headlights on, that impatiently went around that car and hit the couple, Jeffrey said.
“Both of us fell forward,” she said. “I got propelled into the street and could have gotten run over by a second car if others hadn’t jumped into the street to stop traffic. I could have been killed.”
Her husband was bruised but not injured. He wears a fitness tracker and it froze at 5:11 p.m., she said.
One of the bystanders stayed with her, telling her not to move in case her neck was hurt. The ambulance was called.
Among the things Jeffrey was told in the time after the crash was that people in the Chelo’s parking lot heard the car hit her and her husband. Witnesses gave statements to the police, she said.
“I’m just surprised no one with a Ring doorbell camera saw the car,” she said. “There has to be someone out there who saw the car.” Her family is offering a reward, though she doesn’t know the amount, she said.
“Whoever was driving that vehicle had to know they hit two people,” she said.
The Cranston Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for information on the crash.
WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) — Two people are dead and another person seriously hurt after a crash involving two vehicles on the highway in Warwick Saturday.
Rhode Island State Police said the crash happened around 1:34 p.m. on the ramp from Route 113 West to I-95 South.
According to police, a Hyundai SUV that was driving in the middle lane of the highway started to drift to the right, crossed the first lane, and then crossed onto the on-ramp lane. The car struck the guardrail twice before driving through the grass median.
The Hyundai then struck the driver’s side of a Mercedes SUV that was on the ramp, causing the Mercedes to roll over and come to a rest. The impact sent the Hyundai over the guardrail and down an embankment.
The driver of the Hyundai, a 73-year-old man, and his passenger, a 69-year-old woman, were both pronounced dead at the hospital.
A woman who was in the Mercedes was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital in critical condition.
State police said all lanes of traffic were reopened by 4:30 p.m.
The investigation remains ongoing.
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A federal judge on Friday tossed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit aiming to force Rhode Island to hand over its voter information as part of the Trump administration’s push to acquire voter data from several states.
Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy wrote that federal law does not allow the DOJ “to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here,” siding with Rhode Island election officials. She added that the DOJ did not provide evidence to suggest that Rhode Island violated election law.
McElroy, a Trump appointee, wrote that she sided with the similar decision in Oregon. That decision ruled that the DOJ was not entitled to unredacted voter registration lists.
“Absent from the demand are any factual allegations suggesting that Rhode Island may be violating the list maintenance requirements,” she said in her ruling.
Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore (D) praised McElroy’s decision. He said in a statement that the Trump administration “seems to have no problem taking actions that are clear Constitutional overreaches, regularly meddling in responsibilities that are the rights of the states.”
“Today’s decision affirms our position: the United States Department of Justice has no legal right to – or need for – the personally-identifiable information in our voter file,” he said. “Voter list maintenance is a responsibility entrusted to the states, and I remain confident in the steps we take here in Rhode Island to keep our list as accurate as possible.”
The Hill reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The DOJ called for the voter lists as it investigated Rhode Island’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which allowed Americans to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license.
The DOJ sued at least 30 states, as well as Washington, D.C., in December demanding their respective voter data. This data includes birth dates, names and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 12 states have given or said they will give the DOJ their voter registration lists, according to a tracker operated by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The department stated after it lost a similar suit against Massachusetts earlier this month that it had “sweeping powers” to access the voter data and that, if states fail to comply, courts have a “limited, albeit vital, role” in directing election officers on behalf of the administration to produce the records. The DOJ cited the Civil Rights Act as being intended to unearth alleged election law violations.
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