- Eric Sandy / Scene
- Pietrangelo’s house is seen across the street.
James Pietrangelo does not enjoy living across the street from Weiss Field and its popular skate park in Avon Lake. He first filed a lawsuit against the city last September, in which Pietrangelo sought the total annihilation of the half pipe, ramps, rails, etc. But to further illustrate his anger, Pietrangelo has taken to harassing the people who skateboard there: allegedly filming them, screaming at them, punching at least one of them and rather transparently threatening to shoot them.
On June 1 of this year, Pietrangelo told an Avon Lake police officer that the city’s supposed inaction with respect to shutting down the skate park was “forcing him into a George Zimmerman-like state,” which is about the most intense allusion one could make in this year of our lord 2014.
Avon Lake resident Cris Lesh, 18, and about eight of his buddies were hitting the ramps this week when Scene stopped by to figure out what’s so horrific about this skate park. They immediately knew about “this guy with the lawsuit,” and Scene quickly confirmed its suspicions there was nothing horrific about the park at all.
Essentially, they and dozens more in the area have been faced with a steady barrage of harassment from Pietrangelo, particularly since last summer and his lawsuit filing in the fall.
“We’re just doing what the park is meant for,” one of the other skaters said. Nonetheless, they all said, police officers roll by the park “every 15 minutes,” either following up on another Pietrangelo call or simply lending a watchful eye for the safety of the residents.
“He’s causing more of a problem than we are,” Lesh said. Seems so. The skaters told Scene that Pietrangelo often stands across the street or oddly off to the side of the park and films their activities. That’s enough to creep anyone out, particularly when younger children happen to wander over from the nearby playground and into the lens of one James Pietrangelo. Lesh said that all the weirdness has actually caused more families to show up at Weiss Field this summer, seemingly in solidarity against this guy’s obsession.
More to come on that near-constant front to be sure, but the Avon Lake situation interestingly isn’t the only such case of menacing on the westside. In Lakewood, the city shut down Kauffman Park’s basketball courts beginning in the last week of May, citing a “credible concern for public safety near the park.” That’s suburban talk for “credible concern for black people showing up.” The courts, installed four years ago and enveloped by sound barriers, have rankled nearby neighbors from the get-go.
In 2010, Scene published a feature on the morose state of neighborhood basketball courts, focusing mainly on Lakewood’s systematic dismantling of same. Two months later, the Kauffman courts were up. Today, they’re gone. In between came near-constant use of the courts, evidenced via basketball being played at all hours of operation, and a steadily growing surge of harassment from neighbors who rallied against the courts at every opportunity. Last summer, Lakeland Avenue resident David Heller was convicted of disorderly conduct after he approached several seventh-graders who were playing basketball after hours. According to the police report, Heller had been “yelling at the kids to get the fuck out of the park and that he has lived there all his life.” No word yet on David Heller’s feelings about LeBron James’ decision to become a free agent, but we’ve got the odds at nearly 100 percent that he’s called into WKNR in the last 48 hours.
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2014.
Senyak Syndrome.
How can anyone speak TO THE POLICE and announce his intention to shoot park-goers and not get arrested for terroristic threats or AT LEAST have his guns confiscated?
Are the cops waiting for Pietrangelo’s YouTube videos, announcing his plans to kill skaters, a la Isle Vista?
If the cops do not think this man committed a crime yet (?), then his ravings and persistent harassment of the skaters should AT LEAST have resulted in a mental health “pick up and hold for observation” order. Pietrangelo is CLEARLY “a danger to himself or others”.
He also just rents….
Someone should find his landlord and persuade him to evict this horrible man, then. This criminal behavior is a violation of any residential lease.
The courts at Kauffman were closed due to safety concerns for the ball players (aka children) as a disgruntled neighbor was acting in a threatening manner. Not an appropriate reaction at all, but clearly one less malicious than indicated here.
Some people are assholes.
I do tell my young teenage son and his friends to stay away from the skate park because on several occasions that have been called names, bullied and chased by some of the skaters. That isn’t to say that everyone using the skate park are bad, but it is not known as a safe place by the teens in our neighborhood across from the park. Now, with this guy, I have another reason to keep them from going to a park that all kids should be able to enjoy. Sad. I am curious as to this guy’s motives for harassing the skaters? He should not threaten them. He should not record them. What is his deal?
It is annoying, to say the least, when teens and young adults co-opt a park for nefarious purposes and others no longer feel safe using it. And it’s a pubic safety concern; if nothing is done, loud music will be dope dealing and prostitution before long. It happens in a little pocket park near me, and I can’t figure out why the cops do nothing. The park closes at sundown, so what investigative genius does it take to ascertain that kids in there at 3 am are up to no good?
But……
Based only on what is written in this article, the skaters annoy Pietrangelo by skating. No doubt the noise is hard to live with, but the kids have a right to use a public space. He should have moved a long time before things reached this point.
I was just out there with my buddy two nights ago and three squad cars show up after about five minutes. When this happens in Cleveland Heights, the cops normally flash their spotlights and we leave without further interaction. This time they called us over and wrote out a pair of tickets we later found out were for $125 apiece. According to the cops, Pietrangelo has cost the city over $100,000 with his lawsuit
This Scene article is total lying bullshit, put out by the Scene folks who are too busy acting like children and fantasizing about innocent children and adults to bother with the truth. Someone should write an article about their perversion of the truth.
That skate park was the real menace: drugs, trespassing, vandalism, violence, litter, fighting, etc.–everything that skate parks usually are. The people of Avon Lake should have thanked Mr. Pietrangelo for standing up for the neighborhood and good people against that danger. Unfortunately, most Avon Lake residents are cowards, and Mayor Zilka and others in the City of Avon Lake and Lorain County are so corrupt . . .