ANOTHER CVP SCOOP: A knife-wielding robber in a hoodie took $200 in cash from a 7-Eleven clerk in Saddle Brook overnight.
Police were reviewing surveillance video and interviewed witnesses following the 2 a.m. holdup at the Market Street convenience store, Police Chief Robert Kugler told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
A Bergen County Sheriff’s K-9 unit and Bureau of Police Services joined township police in searching the area — including Riverside Cemetery — for the robber.
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PHOTOS: Two firefighters were treated — one for burns and other for cuts on his hand — after a two-alarm Tenafly house blaze ignited by a lightning strike this afternoon. Both were later released from the hospital.
Bergenfield, Cresskill, Dumont and Englewood firefighters, along with Tenafly police and EMS, joined their borough colleagues at the 2½-story River Edge Road house after the blaze broke out just before 2:15 p.m.
The fire began in the attic and hidden knee wall voids on the second floor, Tenafly Assistant Fire Chief Mark Fredrick told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Aidan Flannery
YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST: A lightning strike knocked pieces of a Lyndhurst chimney to the ground this afternoon.
No injuries were reported after the bolt smacked the Second Avenue home in the 400 block just after 4 p.m., Lyndhurst Fire Chief Paul Haggerty Jr. told CLIFFVIEW PILOT tonight.
There was no other structural damage to the house, which Haggerty said borough building inspectors deemed safe for occupancy.
PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Damien Danis (top);
Natasha Hopper-Suarez (above)
PHOTOS: No injuries were reported in a fire that gutted a Ridgefield Park house early this evening.
Bogota, Hackensack and Teaneck firefighters were among those responders who joined their village colleagues at 18 Highland Place.
The blaze began on a rear upper floor.
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CLIFFVIEW PILOT PHOTOS (BELOW): Natasha Hopper-Suarez
ANOTHER CVP SCOOP: A Lyndhurst tenant who used a propane barbecue grill on his second-floor balcony was rescued by a borough firefighter who happened to be nearby when it ignited this afternoon, authorities said.
The Avalon Bay tenant refused immediate medical treatment after being burned on his arms and legs, said Fire Chief Paul Haggerty Jr, who had some harsh words for him.
The high risk of explosion is one of the primary reasons fire officials insist that people do not use propane grills on balconies.
ANY type of open-flame grill should be used on asphalt or concrete and should be at least 10 feet from the nearest structure — for what Haggerty said should be obvious reasons.
“Under the State Uniform Fire Code, propane grills are not permitted on balconies, such as in this case, despite the fact that they are equipped with sprinklers,” the chief told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “The matter is being investigated by the Lyndhurst Fire Official’s Office and is being forwarded to Avalon Bay Management to determine if in fact it is also a violation of their rental policies.
“We’ve all seen, unfortunately, what kind of destruction fire can do to lightweight-constructed buildings,” he added. “Gas grills are located on the courtyard grounds of Avalon Bay for this very reason.
“You would think that residents living in these types of communities would understand the danger. What some may consider a simple accident is simply unacceptable under the circumstances.”
PHOTO: Courtesy LYNDHURST FIRE DEPT
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Rapid assistance from Bergen County sheriff’s forensic investigators helped Ridgefield Park police nab a pair of local brothers hours after $12,000 worth of camera equipment was stolen during a burglary.
Jeffrey Vangeldren, 29 (above, left), and 33-year-old Charles Vangeldren (above, right) forced their way in through the window of a Union Place home early last Wednesday, Capt. Daniel Hippe told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.
The Bergen County Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Identification was collecting evidence after village police responded to the homeowner’s report later that day when a tipster told Westwood police that the brothers had just hocked some of the stolen equipment at a camera shop in their town.
They picked up both brothers at a nearby business.
“BCI did an excellent job immediately processing the scene and recovering evidence that instantly tied these two to our burglary,” Hippe said.
Both Vangeldrens were being held in the Bergen County Jail on $45,000 combined bail each on charges of burglary, theft, criminal mischief and trespassing out of Ridgefield Park and possession of stolen property out of Westwood.
MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Franklin Lakes police detained eight juveniles with pot and alcohol one night and arrested four adults for having an underage frat house drinking party another.
Officers responding to a 12:41 a.m. disorderly complaint yesterday at the William Paterson University frat house on Tice Road charged Farra Jared, 22, of Ridgefield, Harry Sanmartin, 21, of Newark and Charles Nicolich, 22, of Unon with maintaining a nuisance and making alcohol available to underaged drinkers, Detective Lt. John Bakelaar said this morning.
Edgar Ramon Flores, 20, of Passaic was charged with underage drinking, he said.
Two days earlier, officers grabbed eight juveniles running from an Aspen Way home and served them with delinquency complaints for possession of marijuana, alcohol and drug paraphernalia.
ONLY ON CVP: A lawyer for the final defendant arraigned in a Fairview card game murder and robbery entered a “not guilty” plea in a Hackensack courtroom this morning.
Jose Rivas, 26, already is serving a state prison sentence for escape out of Hudson County and couldn’t be brought to court last week with his three co-defendants.
One of them, Evana Dumas, 21, also has been in state prison since November on drug and weapons convictions and isn’t eligible for release for another two years.
Dumas, of Irvington, face 60 or more years in prison if convicted of the shooting death of 50-year-old Fairview card game operator Jeronimo Lopez during a holdup last spring because of other weapons crimes, a prosecutor said last week.
(l. to r.) Dumas, Florestal, Malone (STORY / FILE PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
Also charged with three counts of murder are Blonson Florestal, 20, and Keyshawn Malone, 22, both also of Irvington.
Rivas, an MS-13 gang member from West New York, spent nearly 18 months in state prison before being released in March 2008. He went back in May 2014.
Authorities said he got wind of the game and contacted the three others — all reputed members of the Bloods gang subset Sex Money Murder.
Rivas, Dumas and Malone left Florestal in the car as they pistol-whipped a man standing outside Lopez’s Walker Street apartment smoking a cigarette and shoved him inside, authorities said at the time.
After putting nearly a dozen people on the floor, they took $1,800 in cash, jewelry and other valuables.
Dumas, meanwhile, took Lopez into the kitchen and shot him in the stomach, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said at the time. Lopez later died in surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center.
Several Fairview officers and Bergen County prosecutor’s detectives worked the case, canvassing the neighborhood and assembling valuable information. Arrests were made soon after.
Besides three murder counts each, the indictment on which the defendants were arraigned charges them with:
• conspiring to commit armed burglary and conspiring to commit armed robbery;
• entering the residence and committing the robbery with a deadly weapon;
• assaulting Lopez and six other men during the theft;
• hindering arrest by concealing or destroying evidence, including guns and property stolen from the victims.
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and Cliffside Park police arrested a 72-year-old Peruvian national and a borough man who they said were carrying more than five ounces of cocaine for sale along with $2,800 in alleged drug proceeds.
Charles Quiroz, 45, was being held on $250,000 bail and Augusto Yong Espinosa, 72, on $100,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail following their arrests Friday. Both are charged with drug distribution.
Espinosa, it turned out, also had outstanding warrants from Saddle Brook, Belleville, Clifton and Union City dating back as far as 1998.
Detectives from the prosecutor’s Narcotic Task Force and borough police moved in on the pair as they sat in a Toyota pickup parked outside the Winston Towers, then obtained written consent to search the vehicle from Quiroz, reports show.
MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Two Englewood men living together in a W. Palisade Avenue apartment raided by a Bergen County Regional SWAT Team, a county narcotic task force and city police last week were charged with pot possession, authorities said today.
Charles Williams, 27 (above, left), was ordered held on $10,000 bail and Davon Creighton, 30 (right), released on a court summons after both taken into custody in Thursday’s 6:30 a.m. raid.
Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli announced the arrests this afternoon after the single, unemployed defendants were arraigned.
MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR
YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST: A driver was taken with minor injuries to Hackensack University Medical Center — and a motor vehicle summons — after his sedan flipped on Kipp Avenue in Hasbrouck Heights this afternoon.
Two residents who heard the crash ran over and pulled the man from his Honda, which was headed west when it struck a curb, then a street sign and then a tree before rolling just before 3:30 p.m., Detective Lt. Michael Colaneri told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Police and firefighters responded.
PHOTOS: Rob Knobloch
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: An Englewood man who was drunk when he took a woman, her daughter and granddaughter on a wild car ride against their wills had to be tasered when he fought with police who arrested him, authorities said.
The 40-year-old woman told police that she, her 14-year-old daughter and one-month-old granddaughter got into the car on their way to a dinner outing with family and friends, Detective Capt. Timothy Torell told CLIFFVIEW PILOT tonight.
Suddenly, Francisco Javier Salazar-Ormaza hit the gas and sped off, driving recklessly, she said.
The woman said she smelled alcohol on his breath and demanded he stop, which he did.
He then drove off — only with a cellphone that the trio had inexplicably left in the car, Torell said.
Police pinged the phone to Salazar-Ormaza’s Oakland Street home and found the vehicle in his driveway, the captain said.
“When the officers attempted to placed him under arrest, he fought violently – punching, kicking and biting at all of [them],” Torell said. “Additional police units were called in to assist and the suspect was tased and brought under control.”
Three officers and Salazar-Ormaza were treated at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center for a variety of bumps, bruises and scratches — as well as bites sustained by the officers, he said.
Salazar-Ormaza was being held on $302,500 combined bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with:
three counts of criminal restraint;
three counts of aggravated assault on a police officer;
two counts of child endangerment;
one count each of resisting arrest and obstruction.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy ENGLEWOOD PD
CVP EXCLUSIVE: A North Arlington man must spend more than two more years behind bars for masturbating in front of two 12-year-old girls at his home in separate instances in 2013.
Richard Grossy, 41, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Uruguay, already has been beaten up twice in the Essex County Jail, defense attorney Hussain Gatlin said during Friday’s sentencing in Hackensack. Yet he continues to object to receiving sex offender therapy in a different setting.
“I never expected anyone to see me,” he told Superior Court Judge James J. Guida during his sentencing.
The judge responded that Grossy “does not have to intend as long as there is someone in the area.”
Guida sentenced him to five years for each incident to be served at the same time. Under the state No Early Release Act, he must serve 85% of the term before being eligible for parole.
Grossy, who’d been held on $250,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail since his June 2013 arrest has nearly two years of jail credit that will be applied to the sentence.
The mother of one of the victims, who attended with the girl’s grandfather, told the judge her daughter “was too afraid to come today.”
She wrote a letter, instead, which noted, in part, that the residence where Grossy exposed himself to her “is in the same town where I live, only a few blocks from my grandparents, and near my school.”
She also said that her mother “has to check the windows that she put alarms on every night.”
“I have to have lights on in the room at all times,” the girl’s letter added. “I get up and slam the door in the middle of the night.
“He is always going to be standing in my doorway,” she wrote. “How can I stop my dreams, and remembering?”
“Please protect us from this man. I was only 12 and in 7th grade, an innocent little girl.”
The grandfather asked the judge for “the most you can give him…because a person like him will do this time and time again.”
“Today is the day for punishment,” the grandfather said, “and five years is not unreasonable.”
STORY / PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Mary K. Miraglia
UDPATE: The body of a missing 20-year-old Teaneck man was pulled from the Hudson River on Friday after he killed himself, authorities confirmed tonight.
Timothy Hamlett, whose parents told police he vanished the night after this past Christmas, had been awaiting trial on charges throwing bricks through the windows of more than a dozen cars and homes in town — including one that sent an 18-year-old woman to the hospital.
The 6-foot-tall, 150-pound Hamlett — a former Don Bosco Prep track star — had said he was going to visit a friend in town, his parents said.
Timothy Hamlett (Courtesy: TEANECK PD)
Hamlett liked to hang out in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, between 170th and 182nd streets along Broadway, a short walk from the George Washington Bridge.
An autopsy Saturday confirmed the body recovered in off the shore in upper Manhattan was Hamlett’s, Teaneck Police Chief Robert Carney said tonight.
“According to the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, the cause and manner of death was determined to be a drowning by suicide,” he said.
Port Authority police said it was “undetermined how he came to be in the water.”
MUGSHOT, top: Courtesy TEANECK PD
UPDATE: A woman struck by an NJ Transit train at the Park Ridge station last night died at Hackensack UMC a Pascack Valley, authorities said.
The 30-something woman was struck “right at the station” around 9:30 p.m. by the No. 1634 train out of Spring Valley to Secaucus, NJ Transit’s Jennifer Nelson told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
A bus took the 12 passengers from the Park and Ride lot to Secaucus Junction as Tri-Boro Ambulance took the woman to the hospital, Nelson said. Service wasn’t interrupted, she added.
PHOTO: Joe Mahoney
HOW YOU CAN HELP: You can help the family of Demetrius Carroll, a Hackensack police detective who has dedicated his life to helping others, through a GoFundMe page for his 7-year-old daughter, who recently was diagnosed with leukemia.
Kaia Carroll is undergoing extensive and expensive chemotherapy treatments at Hackensack University Medical Center and is “toughing it out like a champion,” wrote Carroll’s partner, Joseph Roses, who set up the GoFundMe page.
CLICK HERE to HELP KAIA CARROLL
Carroll, a 13½-year police veteran, “continues to perform his duties as a detective on a daily basis, helping others,” Roses added. “Now, Kaia and her family need our help.
“We hope that with kind words, thoughts, prayers and support we can keep Kaia healthy and happy so she can go back to living the life that every 7 year old deserves.”
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A 69-year-old Lodi retiree was arrested this morning on charges of downloading kiddie porn and released on a summons pending a court hearing.
Jose L. Vega was charged with child endangerment by possessing images of child exploitation after detectives executed a search warrant ast his Wisse Street apartment, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said.
An investigation by his Computer Crimes Unit found that Vega “was using the Internet to acquire images of child pornography,” the prosecutor said. “During the search of his residence, additional images of child exploitation were discovered on an electronic device belonging to him.”
Vega, who is single, is due for a first appearance in Central Municipal Court in Hackensack on Thursday.
Molinelli thanked Lyndhurst, Upper Saddle River and Glen Rock police, “who provided additional support in the form of Computer Crimes Task Force personnel,” Molinelli said.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A 69-year-old retiree from Mahwah put his finger into the vagina of a 5-year-old girl, an indictment returned by a grand jury in Hackensack alleges.
Horace R. Ashworth also was charged with impairing the morals of child in addition to the aggravated sexual assault count.
Members of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Special Victims Unit arrested Ashworth last June after an interview with the girl.
Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said the girl originally told her mother of the incident, which the indictment says occurred between June 1 and Sept. 20, 2013.
The mother took the girl to the family pediatrician – who, in turn, contacted the state Division of Child Protection and Permanency, he said.
Division workers then notified his office, Molinelli said.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy MAHWAH PD
UPDATE: Closter firefighters quickly doused an electrical fire in a kindergarten light fixture at Hillside Elementary School tonight.
Principal Alfred A. Baffa was notified and was going to decide whether school would be open tomorrow, authorities told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
