Baker: Every MA Resident Can Get Vaccine By Late June | Patch PM

MASSACHUSETTS — It's Thursday, April 22. Here's what you should know this afternoon:

• A group of residents is circulating a petition to block a gun store from opening as Newton City Council tries to rework its zoning laws to block future gun stores from opening in the city.
• Paul Manganelli, a former Waltham police officer who was sentenced to five years in prison for possessing child pornography, died on March 30 from COVID-19.
• Wednesday's shooting of a suspect by Worcester police was the seventh time police have shot and killed a person in Worcester County since 2015.

Scroll down for more on those and other stories Patch has been covering in Massachusetts today.

Today's Top Story

Even if the federal government doesn't increase the state's weekly allotment, every Massachusetts resident over the age of 16 will be able to get a coronavirus vaccination by the end of June, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said Thursday.

"Everyone who wants a vaccine will get one, certainly by the end of June," Baker said in a news conference at a vaccination center in Pittsfield.

Baker noted the state's "vaccination hesitancy rate" was under the 10 percent and the lowest of any state. He said the state's vaccination effort helped bring the COVID-19 hospitalization rate down 70 percent from its peak in January.

Massachusetts, Baker said, currently has the lowest coronavirus hospitalization rate of any state on the eastern seaboard.

Despite the upbeat tenor of Thursday's news conference, there are still hurdles ahead. None of the vaccines have been approved for use in the U.S. on people under the age of 16, and the state is already looking to a round of booster shots it will need to obtain and distribute this fall.

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Thursday's Other Top Stories

And boom goes the Tannerite: A gender reveal party in Kingston, NH went up in smoke Tuesday, sending a shock through southern New Hampshire and into Massachusetts, local news sources report. The blast, reportedly caused by the ignition of several pounds of highly explosive Tannerite, was felt by residents as far as 20 miles away from the Torromeo Industries quarry. Residents as far north as Epping and as far south as the Merrimack Valley reported hearing a bang or "deep rumble," sources report.

Gun (store) fight: Newton officials issued a stop-work order for renovations being done at a proposed gun store. City officials say the owner, who declined comment, never applied for a building permit. A group of residents is circulating a petition to block the store as Newton City Council tries to rework its zoning laws to block future gun stores from opening in the city.

Ex-cop, lottery winner, child porn possessor dies from COVID-19: Paul Manganelli, a former Waltham police officer who was sentenced to five years in prison for possessing child pornography, died on March 30 from COVID-19. He was 54. Manganelli was arrested in 2013, two years after making headlines in Waltham for another reason: he won $1 million on a scratch ticket.

First elevated car charger outside of L.A. is in MA: Melrose has become the first city on the East Coast — the only place outside of Los Angeles, in fact — to have pole-mounted electric vehicle chargers. The city and National Grid unveiled the chargers in an unseasonably cold, windy event on the shores of one of the ponds at Mount Hood. But what the ribbon-cutting lacked in warmth it made up for with innovation.

Grim toll rises: Wednesday's shooting of a suspect by Worcester police was the seventh time police have shot and killed a person in Worcester County since 2015. The shootings took place during a variety of different events, and none of the officers were found to have wrongly used deadly force.

Learn more about getting a COVID-19 vaccine in Massachusetts at Patch's information hub.

Picture This

Change that sign: After being closed for more than a year, the Coolidge Corner Theater will reopen May 13. The first screening will be Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing," which was the first film shown at the theater in 1989 after a nonprofit was formed to save the theater from closing. (Photo: Jenna Fisher/Patch).

They Said It

"Chauvin immediately stood and calmly placed his hands behind his back. Imagine where we'd be had George done the same."

• A since-deleted post on the Fall River Police Department Facebook page after Tuesday's guilty verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. The department apologized for the post after community backlash, saying an officer meant to make the post on his personal Facebook account.