YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Cliffside Park butcher is charged with sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl.

Julio Peralta-Aguilar, 47, of 1st Street was being held on $250,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with aggravated sexual assault and child endangerment.

The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit and Cliffside Park police arrested him after the girl “disclosed what had occurred to her mother, who took the child to Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck to be examined,” Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said today.

The Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCP&P) and Cliffside Park police were contacted and Molinelli’s investigators notified, he said.

During an interview, the girl — who knew Peralta-Aguilar — “provided specific details regarding what had occurred,” Molinelli said.

Peralta-Aguilar was ordered to surrender his passport as a condition of bail. An arraignment was scheduled for this Thursday.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR

ANOTHER CVP SCOOP: A brazen December 2012 armed robbery at a Little Ferry nail salon was committed by an East Rutherford couple who later locked a 71-year-old woman in a car trunk while they went shopping with her credit cards during a Christmas season crime spree, detectives said today.

Joseph DeFreitas, 43, is headed to state prison for 25 years after pleading guilty three months ago to carjacking in the kidnapping-robbery of the elderly woman in Parsippany on Dec. 29, 2012.

SURVEILLANCE IMAGE: Courtesy LITTLE FERRY PD

His accused accomplice, 53-year-old Marilyn Nadeau, cut a deal with Morris County prosecutors in which she provided information on various crimes — including the Dec. 19, 2012 holdup of Joy Nails & Spa in Little Ferry — while negotiating a plea bargain.

Surveillance cameras caught images of DeFreitas and Nadeau outside the Main Street strip mall near Route 46 and the South Hackensack border the night of the Christmas season nail salon holdup.

Both were wearing gloves and knitted ski masks through which they apparently cut holes so that they could see, the victims later told police.

Waving a black handgun, DeFreitas ordered everyone to the floor, Detective Ronald Klein told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

After emptying the cash register, they took purses from an employee and two female customers and fled in sedan that also was recorded on surveillance footage, he said.

The estimated take: between $10,000 – $12,000 in cash, jewelry and gift cards.

Little Ferry police charged DeFreitas with armed robbery, conspiracy and two illegal weapons possession counts that all carry a combined $250,000 bail.

They charged Nadeau with armed robbery, conspiracy and theft, with a bail of $200,000.

DeFreitas also faces a pending case of aggravated sexual assault in Union County that authorities said he committed on Christmas Eve 2012, five days after the Little Ferry robbery and five before the carjacking.

He’s also wanted by authorities for a home invasion robbery in Connecticut.

ONLY ON CVP: A construction worker accused of sticking his fingers into a 16-year-old girl’s vagina and putting her hand on his penis in his van after offering her a ride last summer got a new court date after his attorney said he couldn’t hear his client’s recorded interrogation by detectives.

Wilfredo Arias, 49, hid behind veteran defense attorney Frank Lucianna after spotting a CLIFFVIEW PILOT correspondent.

Wilfredo Arias (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Mary K. Miraglia)

“Your honor, I need a new date of March 16 because the audio discs are inaudible,” the 92-year-old Lucianna told the judge.

“I can’t hear them, even with my hearing aids in,” he added.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Demetra Maurice didn’t oppose the postponement and said she’d find out what was wrong.

Arias, 49, remained free on $250,000 bail, posted two weeks after his July 3 arrest.

Authorities at the time said the girl called 911 after she managed to break free while he was molesting her in his van.

A five-count indictment returned by a grand jury in Hackensack last October accuses him of sexual assault by “placing his fingers in [the girl’s] vaginal labia through physical force or coercion,” with “no severe personal injury.”

It says he also “[placed] her hand on his penis,” also through “physical force or coercion,” and that he pressed his groin against hers, “rubbing or grinding.”

Included with the one assault and three sexual contact charges is a count of child endangerment.

Arias previously avoided prison time and Megan’s Law registration when New Jersey’s highest court overturned his 2002 conviction on sex assault charges, in a case that set a standard for how jurors are selected, CLIFFVIEW PILOT exclusively reported last year.

A judge in Hackensack sentenced Arias to six years in state prison after jurors convicted him of of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old Little Ferry girl.

But the state Supreme Court overturned the conviction in early 2005, sending it back to Hackensack for retrial, because Arias wasn’t allowed to participate in interviews of potential jurors.

He then took a plea instead.

Arias benefitted from another downgraded plea deal four years ago — again keeping him from Megan’s Law registration — after being charged with sexually assaulting a 7-year old Cliffside Park girl.

After completing his sentence last April 8, he was arrested on the Fourth of July after the Leonia teen said he molested her when she accepted a ride in his van.

Making it all possible: a procedural error. READ MORE….

STORY / PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia

UPDATE: A grand jury in Hackensack today indicted a North Bergen interior designer on death by auto charges for killing a 61-year-old bicyclist on River Road in Edgewater last year while driving drunk.

Siobhan Stokley, 41, remained free on $15,000 bail in connection with the 10:50 p.m. crash last May 12.

Siobhan Stokley (MUGSHOT: Courtesy BCPO)

Tony Tyson of Jersey City slammed his head on the pavement after being hit in the right lane by Stokley’s 2007 Hummer H2, authorities said at the time. He was hospitalized in critical condition and pronounced dead nearly 48 hours later.

Stokley, a Ridgewood High School and Parsons School of Design graduate who operates her own interior design company, also received summonses for DWI and reckless driving.

Convictions for second-degree death by auto charges carry state prison sentences of up to 10 years.

MUGSHOT (top): Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: NJ Transit trains through Bergen County were temporarily halted while authorities searched for a suicidal man whom they believed intended to step in front of a train last night.

Elmwood Park police eventually found the 39-year-old borough man on the tracks behind English Avenue Park and brought him to Bergen Regional Medical Center for an evaluation, Police Chief Michael Foligno told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Foligno said said the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office called his office around 7 p.m. with a report of a man who “intended to commit suicide by stepping in front of a train.”

Officers were joined by Fair Lawn police near the Broadway/East 55th Street area, while NJ Transit stopped all area trains.

“After a thorough search of the area, officers at first could not locate [him],” Foligno said.

They then widened their search and found him, the chief said.

The Elmwood Park Ambulance Corp then took him to BRMC, he said.

EXCLUSIVE REPORT: The attorney for a Saddle Brook gun collector found with a stockpile of firearms, gunpowder and ammunition after police said his wife stabbed him said yesterday that his client was unfairly denied entry into a special program that would have cleared his record based on a mistaken belief that he had assault weapons.

A report by an oversight committee denying 65-year-old Robert Lintner entry to the Pre-Trial Intervention Program is full of “hyperbolic hysteria” that includes a comment that the guns are “designed for nothing other than killing on a large scale,” defense attorney Evan Nappen told a judge in Hackensack.

Robert Lintner, defense attorney Evan Nappen (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)

That, he said, is “flat-out wrong.”

All of Lintner’s weapons are more than 60 years old, of World War II vintage and inoperable, Nappen said, as he client stood next to him supported by a walker.

The guns originally belonged to Lintner’s father, the attorney said.

One of them, a vintage M-1 carbine, was ruled a “legitimate target shooting firearm” by then-state Attorney General Robert Del Tufo, ”when the original assault firearms legislation was proposed,” he said.

A 10-count indictment returned by a grand jury in October charges Lintner with “creating risk of widespread injury or damage by recklesslessly handling or storing” 300 pounds of gunpowder in his 1,400-square-foot home.

The amount of powder was 10 times the legal limit that can be stored residentially, as well as a public safety hazard “not only for the home itself but for adjacent homes,” Saddle Brook Police Chief Robert Kugler told CLIFFVIEW PILOT following Lintner’s August arrest.

Authorities took 200 firearms from the home for storage and cataloging, as required by domestic violence laws.

Surrounding homes also were temporarily evacuated after police found and removed the gunpowder when they went to collect the guns.

During the operation, 65-year-old Eileen Lintner posted $75,000 bail and was released on aggravated assault charges — with the condition that she have no contact with her husband.

She has not been able to return to the house, authorities told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Her husband, meanwhile, has remained free on $2,500 bail.

Police first went to the house the morning of Aug. 7 on a domestic violence call and found Robert Lintner stabbed just below his ear. They took his wife into custody and obtained a search warrant.

Investigators found the powder and what Kugler, the police chief, called an “extensive” amount of ammunition after recovering the kitchen knife that they believe was used in the stabbing.

At that point they immediately halted their firearms search and summoned the Bergen County Police Department Bomb Squad. Adjacent homes were briefly evacuated.

Lintner had five gun vaults in the house and and what authorities initially estimated were 100 firearms, including handguns and long rifles, Kugler said.

They found dozens more after firefighters opened the vaults using the Jaws of Life.

Cracking the 6-foot-tall, half-ton safes became necessary when Lintner refused to open the himself, Kugler said.

“It’s better than trying to carry them out,” he told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time.

Superior Court Judge James J. Guida said yesterday that he will review briefs from both sides and rule on Lintner’s appeal by March 9.

Robert Lintner, defense attorney Evan Nappen (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A worker was hospitalized after falling seven feet from scaffolding outside a Closter temple this morning, authorities said.

The 52-year-old Greenlawn, NY man was moved by a co-worker after falling and losing consciousness outside Temple EmanuEl on Piermont Road just before 10 a.m., Police Chief Dennis Kaine told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Closter police sercured him for Closter First Aid and Paramedics arrived, who took the victim to Hackensack University Medical Center with injuries to his head, back and ribs, the chief said.

SHOUT OUT: The George Washington Bridge’s upper level was briefly shut down last night as Port Authority police helped save a 54-year-old Jersey City Heights man who coded while suffering a heart attack.

Luis Feliciano’s 17-year-old son called police at 5:56 p.m. from the car, which was stopped in a westbound lane just off the bridge near Lemoine Avenue.

“When we located him, the father had no pulse,” an officer told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Officers Krystal Armenti and Lionel Gonzalez began CPR while Tunnel and Bridge Agent Fayrouz Halabi set up a defibrillator.

EMS responders arrived and continued CPR, then took the man to Englewood Medical Center. They took his son, as well, after he briefly went into shock.

The GWB’s upper level was reopened at 6:12 p.m.

The victim remained in the hospital’s intensive care unit this morning, the authority’s Joseph Pentangelo told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

“He was breathing on his own when we left,” another officer said. “It’s amazing that we were able to bring him back.”

UPDATE: Authorities suspect a snapped strap or bracket for the downing of utility cable that fell across Route 17 in Mahwah this afternoon, clotheslining an SUV.

“A preliminary cause although not confirmed is that a strap/bracket holding the cable to the utility pole may have broken and the entire cable came down under the weight,”Police Chief James Batelli told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

The highway was partially reopened at 2:10 p.m. and was completely clear a little over a half-hour later.

No injuries were reported when the Verizon cable, containing thousands of wires, landed across the front of the SUV, stopping it in its tracks, smashing both headlights and damaging the grill near the West Ramapo Avenue overpass.

Mahwah police and firefighters initially responded, followed by Verizon, which the chief said was expected to work through the night.

PHOTO: Courtesy MAYOR W. LAFORET

ONLY ON CVP: A Little Ferry man who’s has previous run-ins with police tumbled down several stairs with officers after taking a swing at one of them, authorities said.

Rocky Minotti, 28, was being held on $60,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with three counts of aggravated assault on police, resisting arrest and criminal mischief.

Officers called to his grandmother’s Grand Street house found that Minotti had broken a window trying to get in — to retrieve a phone charger, he told them, Detective Ronald Klein told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Officer Adam Warne was walking him down the stairs when Minotto took a swing at Sgt. Christopher Boel, hitting him in the side of the head, Klein said.

Both officers were OK after the incident, he said, adding that Klein wasn’t injured, either.

Minotti six months ago was arrested by Carlstadt police who said they caught him with generic Xanax without a prescription after he caused a disturbance on an NJ Transit bus.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy CARLSTADT PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Jurors in Hackensack this afternoon found a Bergenfield man not guilty on all counts in a New Year’s Eve 2012 armed robbery at an alleged drug den in Englewood after they disregarded DNA evidence that placed him at the scene.

Michael L. Barrett smiled broadly and hugged defense attorney Joseph A. Raia after the verdict, which followed less than a day combined of deliberations beginning Friday.

Barrett “said all along that he wasn’t involved,” Raia told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “We have the greatest justice system in the world, and it was on display today.”

Prosecutors presented a ski mask left by the robbers on which Barrett’s DNA was found as their primary evidence in the trial.

A forensic DNA specialist put the chances that the sample taken from the mask could belong to any other African-American in the country as one in 64.1 million.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kenneth Ralph also offered jurors a statement that Barrett made to Englewood Police Detective Capt. Timothy Torell roughly 19 months after the holdup.

Told that the DNA on the hat matched his, Barrett, then an inmate at the Bergen County Jail, asked the captain: “How many years do I get if I plead guilty?”

The Hamilton Avenue home was assumed to be a target because of previous drug activity there. Responding officers found the place in disarray and arrested two occupants, Gavin Birthwright and Deshawn Stephens, on drug possession charges.

According to Raia: “They were partying, watching the ball drop, drinking and smoking weed. Soon after two women left, someone came in the back door armed with weapons, and used them to intimidate Birthwright and Stephens.”

The two told police they were robbed, shots were fired, and “those guys were not from around here. They were from someplace else, maybe Newark, but not here,” he said.

Barrett was cleared of three counts of assault with a deadly weapon, using a deadly weapon during a theft, armed burglary and illegal possession of a shotgun and a handgun.

STORY / PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A North Bergen bread delivery truck driver was indicted by a grand jury in Hackensack yesterday in the hit-and-run death of a Carlstadt business owner.

Joseph Eizaguirre, 23, fell asleep at the wheel of a Schripps European Bread Company around 4:30 a.m. last July 26 on Paterson Plank Road/Route 120, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time.

The truck struck and killed Boro Atanasoski, a 63-year-old Macedonian immigrant who lived in Brooklyn and owned Faith Environmental, Inc., a hazardous materials and asbestos removal contractor on Stanley Street in East Rutherford.

Eizaguirre, who has remained free on $105,000 bail, was driving while on the revoked list at the time, the indictment returned yesterday revealed.

The indictment charges him with “driving recklessly and causing the death” of Antanoski while on the revoked list, leaving the scene of an accident and failing to assist a physically helpless victim unable to care for himself.

Molinelli’s Fatal Accident Investigation Unit handled the investigation.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A federal grand jury in Newark today indicted a former assistant vice-president at BankAsiana in Fort Lee on charges of embezzling more than $1.2 million from her employer.

Miye Chon, 34, of Englewood Cliffs — also known as Karen Chon — made a series of unauthorized transfers from customers’ CDs into the bank’s vault cash account, then walked out with the money over the course of several years, the indictment alleges.

Dozens of illegal transfers typically went for tens of thousands of dollars at a time, although one was for $100,000, it says, in charging Chon with one count of bank fraud and 27 counts of theft, embezzlement or misapplication of funds by a bank officer or employee.

“Bank records show that during one week between September 27, 2013 and October 4, 2013, Chon’s last day working at the bank, she made multiple unauthorized transfers from customer accounts totaling approximately $1.2 million to cover losses in other customer accounts that she had previously looted,” U.S. Attorney Paul S. Fishman said after Chon surrendered to FBI agents this past September.

Officials said the scheme ended up costing the bank $1.4 million.

After BankAsiana was acquired in October 2013, officials launched an internal investigation in response to a customer’s complaint about tax forms and account records, the U.S. attorney said.

They found that Chon accessed BankAsiana’s computer systems using her credentials to make the transfers, he said.

She’d avoided detection to that point “by making false entries in the bank’s records and ensuring that funds she removed from CDs were transferred back into those accounts before they were set to reach maturity,” Fishman said.

Fishman praised special agents of the FBI’s Newark Field Office for their work on the case, which is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul A. Murphy of Fishman’s Economic Crimes Unit in Newark.

ANOTHER CVP SCOOP: Five months after he was originally charged — and a week after being indicted on charges of sexually assaulting two teenage sisters — a convicted Megan’s Law offender from Englewood remained a fugitive this morning.

Jesus H. Restrepo, 49, fled in September after learning that Englewood detectives had obtained a warrant for his arrest on first-degree sexual assault charges for what they said was a pair of incidents nearly eight years apart.

An indictment returned by a grand jury in Hackensack last week accuses Restrepo of digitally penetrating a 14-year-old girl’s vagina between November 2002 and February 2003 and with rubbing her sister’s thighs in 2010, when she was 13, after he’d been released from prison.

It also charges him with two counts of impairing the morals of a child.

Restrepo — who has a criminal history spanning more than 20 years and including aggravated assault on a police officer — failed to report as a Megan’s Law offender after being sentenced to lifetime community supervision, the indictment says.

He also failed to reside in an approved residence, it says.

Authorities asked that anyone who sees Restrepo, or knows where to find him, call Englewood police: (201) 568-4875. All calls will remain confidential, they said.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Bergenfield man fought with a Palisades Interstate Parkway police officer who caught him smoking pot at the Rockefeller Lookout in Englewood Cliffs before he was taken into custody just after midnight today, authorities said.

Officer Joseph Villone was conducting a routine check of a parked vehicle when he smelled burning marijuana and saw 23-year-old Bernard Sevilla toking up, Police Chief Michael Coppola said this morning.

“I’m not getting out,” Coppola said Sevilla told the officer after he was ordered out of the car.

Villone ordered him out again, “at which point he began to destroy the evidence,” the chief said.

A struggle ensued when the officer tried to pull him out, he said.

Additional PIP officers arrived, along with those from Englewood Cliffs and Port Authority police.

Villone sustained minor hand injuries, Coppola said.

Sevilla was being held on $9,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with resisting arrest, hindering, obstruction, possession of marijuana, hash an ddrug paraphernalia, being under the influence of drugs and improperly disposing of a lit object.

His vehicle was impounded pending a search warrant after he refused consent, the chief added.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy PALISADES INTERSTATE PARKWAY PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Authorities seized three guns from a 68-year-old Teaneck auto detailer while arresting him on charges of threatening a bank clerk yesterday.

An employee at the Chase Bank branch on Ayers Court told responding Teaneck officers just after 1 o’clock yesterday afternoon that John Heywang “had made several threatening statements while conducting business at the bank,” Capt. John A. Faggello said this morning.

“One of the statements made reference to a weapon,” he said, without elaborating.

A law enforcement source told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that Heywang claimed to have “the guns and ammo to hurt over 3,000 people.”

The self-professed chemist left but was grabbed minutes later by New Milford police at his Heavenly Bodies auto detailing business in their town after an alert was broadcast for his black Mercedes Benz GL 500.

They seized the weapons there, Faggello said.

Heywang, a Dumont native who has produced liquid glass polish and finish for race cars and other high-performance vehicles, has touted himself as “the Chief Scientist and CEO of Liquid Glass Enterprises, Inc. and Liquid Glass Laboratories, Inc.,” which he said “provides legendary liquid glass products for the automotive, marine, aircraft and commercial industrial market.”

Teaneck police charged him with making terroristic threats and released him on a court summons to appear next Wednesday.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy TEANECK PD

ONLY ON CVP: A 20-year-old Hackensack man repeatedly shook his head “no” yesterday as a prosecutor accused him of sexually assaulting an 11-year old girl.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kristin DeMarco formally read charges against Quashawn Nowlin of Lehigh Street of first-degree aggravated sexual assault of a child under 13, second -degree sexual contact and impairing the morals of a minor during a brief court appearance in Hackensack.

The 5-foot-11, 200-pound Nowlin, standing beside defense attorney P.J. Koulikoros, shook his head as DeMarco read the charges. He didn’t speak.

Koulikoros entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf

An indictment returned against Nowlin last month says he forced the girl to give him oral sex and “touched or kissed” her breasts sometime between May and September of 2013.

He assaulted the girl no fewer than four times in that span, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said after members of his Special Victims Unit and Teaneck police arrested Nowlin in September.

Molinelli said the victim told her sister, who then alerted the girl’s mother. She, in turn, contacted the state Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCP&P), which notified the unit, the prosecutor said.

Nowlin, who Mollinelli said is single and unemployed, remained held on $200,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, down from an original $300,000.

He’s due back in court March 16.

STORY / PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia

PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Rob Cochrane

BREAKING NEWS: A man was struck and killed by an NJ Transit train on an overpass east of the Garfield station this afternoon in what authorities told CLIFFVIEW PILOT initially appeared to be an accident.

About 100 people were aboard when the adult black male was struck as he walked on the elevated platform over River Drive near Hobart Place at 2:03 p.m., a source with direct knowledge of the incident told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

The Waldwick-bound No. 1259 train continued roughly 300 yards before coming to a full stop.

Service on the Bergen County Line service was temporarily suspended between Secaucus and Glen Rock.

“All customers were transferred to bus service or utilized other means of transportation,” William Smith, NJ Transit’s senior public information officer, told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Rob Cochrane

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A severely wounded horse flailed in agony for four hours as her owner and others tried to free her from a mechanical feeder pit on a Mahwah farm before she and died, her owner told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this afternoon.

“Everybody is so very saddened by the situation,” attorney George F. Surgent said of the death last week of Belle, whom he said he’d had for more than 30 years.

“We all tried our best to get Belle out,” Surgent said. “We worked for hours to try to get her up. Maybe it was the ice. I don’t know. She never had a problem with the feeder before.”

Mahwah Police Chief James Batelli said his officers were summoned to the Ramapo Valley Road farm around 10:30 p.m. last Tuesday by a tow company operator who’d been calling to the scene to help.

Multiple sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that Belle apparently caught a leg in a metal hay feeder and apparently panicked, tried to get free and fell in further.

Sgt. Timothy O’Hara and Officer Keith Iorio found Belle on her side, “trapped inside a metal feeding ring in a field area,” Batelli said.

She’d suffered a deep gash on her head and neck, sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT, and was flailing on the icy ground inside the feeder, the chief said.

“The homeowner, and owner of the horse and an employee indicated they had been trying to free the horse from the feeder…since 5:30 p.m.,” Batelli said.

NAR Towing was called “to use its winching mechanisms to try and remove the metal feeder grates,” he said.

Surgent “also attempted to use a sawzall to cut the grates,” the chief said.

“The metal grates that made up the feeder ring were eventually removed,” Batelli said, “but the horse remained trapped in the pit, which was frozen over.”

“We tried but we couldn’t get her to stand up” after that, Surgent told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “Once a horse goes down like that, it’s hard to get her back up.”

Tyco Animal Control was dispatched, along with an equine veterinarian.

“Officers administered first aid in an attempt to control the arterial bleeding from the horse’s head,” the chief said. “The veterinarian also administered pain relief medication and a mild sedative in an attempt to calm the horse down.”

Mahwah Fire Company #1 responded in an attempt to pull Belle up and onto her feet, but Surgent said she “eventually gave out.”

Her carcass was removed Wednesday afternoon.

The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Animal Cruelty Task Force was reviewing the circumstances, Batelli said.

“Everyone here is very thankful to the police department, the fire department, Carol Tyler the vet and the towing company for their help,” Surgent told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this afternoon.

“We all loved her and we’re all very sad,” he said.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Two men arrested by members of a special task force moments after an Englewood burglary have been tied to no fewer than a dozen residential daytime break-ins in three counties, authorities said.

Special Investigations Squad officers who’d been tailing them said they watched Tuesday as 46-year-old Daniel Gomez of Union City (above, right) picked up Julio Ponce, 33 (above, left) at his Clifton home in a van and headed to Englewood, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli confirmed late this morning.

“Shortly after 10 a.m. task force officers notified police in Englewood that the [two] appeared to be looking at homes to burglarize in the 1st Ward section,” Molinelli said.

Scared off by a burglar alarm, they began casing homes in neighboring Tenafly, the prosecutor said.

Then they returned to Englewood, he said.

The instant they emerged from a burglarized home and headed toward the van, task force members moved in and arrested them.

Ponce and Gomez are charged with burglary, theft and possession of burglary tools in connection with Tuesday’s Englewood break-in. Gomez was carrying a small amount of pot, for which he was also charged, authorities said.

Both men were also charged with two burglaries out of River Edge — on Jan. 16 and 29 — and with burglary and theft out of Fair Lawn, also on Jan. 16.

Ponce was being held on a combined $250,000 bail, and Gomez on $115,000, in the Bergen County Jail. Arraignments were set for Feb. 25.

As part of a two-month investigation, the task force also was eyeing both men for burglaries in Franklin Lakes, as well as for break-ins out of Essex and Passaic counties — four of them in Fairfield.

Additional charges were expected.

The Special Investigations Squad, under the direction of Chief Carmen Martino, is comprised of officers from Cliffside Park, Englewood, Fair Lawn, Franklin Lakes, Paramus, River Edge, Rutherford, Tenafly and the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office, as well as from Belleville, Fairfield, Totowa and Verona, Molinelli said.