The 10 Biggest Stories of 2011

The year 2011 is coming to a close, but what a year it was. We here at Norwood Patch decided to look back on some of the biggest and most popular stories of 2011. Here are the top ten (in no particular order)...

The brand new Norwood High School was of this year and opened for the 2011-2012 school year. The old school was torn down over the summer after a from the Norwood Alumni Association.

Former Coakley Middle School vice principal Stephen Shinnick was in April of this year, after pleading guilty to abusing his position as treasurer of the Norwood School Employee Federal Credit Union to steal more than a quarter of a million dollars.

State Senator Mike Rush, who represents all of Norwood, for non-compliance with campaign finance laws. The senator said that new computer software combined with volunteers tasked with entering data into the system must have been the reason why there were two overnight jumps of more than $10,000 to his campaign funds in the last year without the required information on just who donated the cash.

The annual Circle of Hope Luminary Night is always a big event for the town of Norwood, but this year's was with more luminaries purchased to light the town common than ever before.

This was a tough year for the job market, and local jobseekers had to use all the resources available to them. Over the summer Norwood Patch intern Andrew Krietz spoke to a few Norwood residents about the situation, all of whom said, basically,

There were two fatalities on the Commuter Rail tracks in Norwood in 2011, one and one In both tragedies the victim was trespassing on the tracks when struck by a train, and both were pronounced dead on the scene.

Norwood police assisted in the arrest of a Dedham man in January for and using that identification to defraud a woman he met on Craigslist as well as to obtain government discounts at a Norwood hotel. The suspect was then erroneously released after a "clerical error" at the Dedham District Court, causing police and U.S. Marshals to chase and re-arrest him.

Norwood Patch welcomed movie reviewer Matty W. Kelley to our publication in 2011, and our readers put his columns regularly among our most popular stories.

We had some crazy weather in 2011, from snow storms that stretched from January to , to in July, to , to a that stopped trick-or-treating for many local youngsters. And let us not forget the split-second

In October, Norwood School Committee Chair William Plasko Jr. was arrested on charges of breaking and entering and indecent assault. He pleaded not guilty to all charges, and resigned his chairmanship of the committee. The story will continue in 2012 as Plasko's pretrial conferences will begin in January.

Have a story from the past year to add to our list? Tell us in the comments.