HARRISON —
The new football coach at Harrison High School was arrested last Friday night and hit with an assortment of charges, including driving while intoxicated, reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident and driving with a suspended driver’s license.
According to the Harrison police report, Thomas Ferriero, 50, was arrested by Harrison police after he allegedly took a Board of Education van and crashed it into five parked vehicles, the last one being parked at Kingsland Ave. and Hamilton St.
According to the report, Harrison police arrived at the scene at 8 p.m. last Friday and found Ferriero standing next to the van that he crashed. The report says that he was “unsteady on his feet and slurring his words.” When asked if he had been drinking, Ferriero told police that he had “three beers.” The report said that Ferriero smelled of an odor of an alcoholic beverage.
At that point, assisting Harrison police asked Ferriero to conduct field sobriety tests, which he could not do successfully.
Harrison police found out that Ferriero took the van without permission from his father, a Board of Education employee, who had been assigned permission to use the van.
A witness said that Ferriero was traveling westbound on Hamilton St. when it struck a vehicle parked at 752 Hamilton, a 2014 silver Honda. Ferriero continued to drive the van on Hamilton, when the van struck another parked vehicle at 736 Hamilton, this one being a 2010 Toyota. The suspect vehicle then apparently made a U-turn and proceeded east onto Kingsland Ave.
From there, the van struck a third vehicle located in front of Harrison High School, a 2013 Jeep. After striking the third vehicle, the van veered across Kingsland Ave. striking the fourth vehicle head on, a 2007 black Ford. Ferriero then apparently got out of the van to retrieve the front right tire that had been ripped off during the accident.
Back at police headquarters, Ferriero submitted two samples of his breath for analysis. The test result was a 0.11.
Ferriero was suspended without pay as the head football coach, a position he was just appointed to last March. He is the former girls’ basketball coach at Queen of Peace, as well as the former head football coach at QP and Harrison. There’s no word about a possible replacement for Ferriero, although Juan Garcia, the former head coach at Marist in Bayonne, has been an assistant under Ferriero since his hiring and seems like a logical choice for a replacement.
For more on this story, including an exclusive interview with Ferriero, please read Jim Hague’s Sports View column in the Aug. 17 editions of The Observer.
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Jim Hague | Observer Sports Writer
Sports Writer Jim Hague was with The Observer for 20+ years — and his name is one of the most recognizable in all of sports journalism. The St. Peter’s Prep and Marquette alum kicked off his journalism career post Marquette at the Daily Record, where he remained until 1985. Following shorts stints at two other newspapers, in September 1986, he joined the now-closed Hudson Dispatch, where he remained until 1991, when its doors were finally shut.
It was during his tenure at The Dispatch that Hague’s name and reputation as one of country’s hardest-working sports reporters grew. He won several New Jersey Press Association and North Jersey Press Club Awards in that timeframe.
In 1991, he became a columnist for The Hudson Reporter chain of newspapers — and he remains with them to this day.
In addition to his work at The Observer and The Hudson Reporter, Hague is also an Associated Press stringer, where he covers Seton Hall University men’s basketball, New York Red Bulls soccer and occasionally, New Jersey Devils hockey.
He’s also doing work at The Morristown Daily Record, the very newspaper where his journalism career began.
During his career, he also worked for Dorf Feature Services, which provided material for the Star-Ledger. While there, he covered the New York Knicks and the New Jersey Nets.
Hague is also known for his announcing work — and he’s done PA work for Rutgers Newark and NJIT.
Hague is the author of the book “Braddock: The Rise of the Cinderella Man.”