YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A distinctive tattoo helped Englewood detectives identify a Newark man who they said robbed a woman at a local bus stop.

Detective Carlos Marte tracked down Pablo M. Perez, who’d been arrested for an attempted Hasbrouck Heights holdup the night before Tuesday night’s robbery, Detective Capt. Timothy Torell told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

The 57-year-old North Bergen victim said she was sitting at the bus stop at the corner of Broad and East Sheffield Avenues around 6 p.m. when the robber pulled up in a black Chevy SUV, got out and snatched her pocketbook.

“He also grabbed another bag she had that was on the bus stop seat next to her,” Torell said, adding that the robber then took off in the car.

One of the woman’s credit cards was used a short time later at a Ridgefield Park gas station, the captain said.

Detectives who responded to the gas station linked Perez and his car to the fraud — as well as to an attempted robbery at a Hasbrouck Heights gas station the night before, Torell said.

They also discovered that he has a large “S” tattoo in elaborate script on his back, which the woman described, he said.

East Orange police arrested Perez for an unrelated offense a short time after the Hasbrouck Heights attemped holdup.

In that incident, police said, Perez pulled into a Shell station on northbound Route 17 and assaulted the attendant, shouting, “Give me the money!”

The attendant struggled with him, and Perez got back into the SUV and took off, Colaneri sai Detective Lt. Michael Colaneri Jr. told CLIFFVIEW PILOT on Tuesday.

Hasbrouck Heights police issued an alert after interviewing the attendant and viewing station surveillance video.

Elmwood Park police identified the suspect as Perez a short time later.

Perez remained held on a combined $175,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with robbery in Englewood and Hasbrouck Heights, among other offenses.

“Both the victim and the gas attendant displayed great courage in getting our detectives the information they needed to connect the dots and make this arrest,” Torell said.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy HASBROUCK HEIGHTS PD

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Ridgewood man wearing only a cowboy hat and wielding a bottle was tasered by police after he charged officers investigating a neighborhood burglary, witnesses told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Officers responding to a 9:30 a.m. report of an Olivia Street burglary in which two teens were at home spotted Craig D. Andrews, 48, coming down the street at them with the bottle, Police Chief John Ward said.

Officers tasered Andrews under the New Jersey Attorney General’s Use of Force guidelines, the chief said.

Witnesses on the block told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that Andrews, after recovering, appeared to sustain a seizure.

He was taken by ambulance to the Valley Hospital, where a source with direct knowledge of his condition said he remained this evening.

A judge ordered Andrews held on $40,000 bail, charged with burglary, criminal trespass, obstruction, drug possession and lewdness.

Andrews has a criminal history that includes a March 2010 drug arrest after police said they found him standing in the middle of East Glen and North Maple Avenues screaming that he was God.

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PUBLIC ALERT: Rutherford police are seeking the public’s help finding a motorist who fled after his car struck a bicyclist on Route 17 who was headed from New York City to Pennsylvania.

The 32-year-old victim, from Bronson, Mich., had stopped on the median between the southbound highway and the north service road near the Route 3 interchange to tend to a mechanical problem, Police Chief John Russo told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

The driver was in the center land and “tried to make a last-ditch attempt to merge onto the service road by cutting across the median” when his dark-colored sedan with Maryland license plates hit the victim around 10:10 p.m., Russo said.

The victim landed on the hood, smashing the windshield and sustaining massive facial injuries, the chief said. He was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, he said.

The driver then “backed up and took off towards the [Rutherford] north service road and local streets,” Russo said.

Witnesses told police the sedan sustained front-end damage along with the broken windsheield.

IF YOU SEE THE VEHICLE, or have information that could help the investigation, call Rutherford PD: (201) 939-6000

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FROM YESTERDAY: Bergen County detectives arrested a Tennessee man in Connecticut after a 27-year-old woman reported that he’d sexually abused her at his previous home in Hackensack over the course of seven years, beginning when she was 7.

Extradition proceedings were under way for Alex Safanova, 62, who was taken into custody in Lebanon, CT on Wednesday after Special Victims Unit investigators tracked him to a family member’s home there from Dayton, TN, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said yesterday.

Safanova, who is married, faces two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one of sexual assault by contact. A judge set bail at $300,000 once he is brought to the Bergen County Jail.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR

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CVP EXCLUSIVE: “Someone could have been killed,” a judge in Hackensack yesterday told a Wallington motorcyclist he sentenced to probation for two years for leading a police chase from Ridgefield Park to Paterson while drunk.

Karol Brutkowski, 34, was clocked as fast as 72 miles an hour in a 25 mph zone and at times crossed into traffic, Superior Court Judge Margaret M. Foti said.

Foti said she’d have been more lenient if not for those factors.

Brutkowski accepted a pre-indictment plea, which allows prosecutors to avoid presenting a case to a grand jury — and produces more lenient sentences as a result.

Police said they tried to stop Brutkowski before dawn this past May 9 n Ridgefield Park but he took off at his high speed, pursuing officers behind him, before crashing the motorcycle into a utility box in front of Most Sacred Heart Church on Carlton Avenue in Paterson.

Defense attorney Michael G. Brucki told the judge that Brutkowski — a native of Lozma, Poland and a naturalized U.S. citizen — had just bought the motorcycle.

He was “scared and didn’t know why he was being arrested,” the lawyer said. “That combined with the drinking was a volatile combination, and he used poor judgement.

“He fully acknowledges he was drinking. He has now gotten rid of the motorcycle.”

Brutkowski, meanwhile, told the judge that he was sorry while pleading guilty to drunk driving.

PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: An 83-year-old Hasbrouck Heights man killed his 58-year-old tenant with a single gunshot to the chest during an argument yesterday, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said this morning.

John C. Wisse was charged with aggravated manslaughter and illegal weapons possession in the death of Gerald Velardi Jr. at the two-family Passaic Street home after sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT he dialed 911 around 5 p.m. to report what had happened.

The .38-caliber handgun was recovered following the downstairs shooting, the prosecutor said.

Wisse was being held on $750,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail after detectives who interviewed him late into the night charged him.

The investigation was continuing, Molinelli said.

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PHOTOS: Sean Slattery

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SHOUT OUT: For the third time this month, South Hackensack police last night saved an overdosing heroin addict with Narcan.

Officers responding to the Horizon Motel on Route 46 at 11:30 p.m. found the 35-year-old Toms River man “unresponsive, with no signs of life” on the floor at the door of his room, Capt. Robert Kaiser told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this afternoon.

Sgt. Domenici Mea administered two blasts of Narcan, the second of which brought the man around.

He was taken by ambulance to Hackensack University Medical Center.

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A New Milford police officer checking out an illegally parked car in front of a local bank led to the arrests of four Bronx men and the seizure of assorted bogus debit, Social Security and passport cards, along with a U.S. Treasury check.

Officer Darrell Marshall was talking to the driver outside the Bank of America on Ray Woods Lane just after 11 a.m. Thursday when the other passengers “began to switch places and act in a suspicious manner,” Detective Kevin Van Saders told CLIFFVIEW PILOT tonight.

Backups arrived and helped turn up 11 bank debit cards issued to unknown identities, ten fraudulent U.S. Social Security cards, seven bogus U.S. passport cards and the check “issued to an unknown party,” Van Saders said.

Arested were: Nolasco Martinez, 30; Ray Reynoso, 20; Mickey Mejia, 19; and Jorge Salcedo, 40 (clockwise from top left).

Charged with possession of a fraudulent U.S. document were Martinez and Mejia (nine counts each), Reynoso (eight counts) and Salcedo (6 counts).

Martinez was also charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit credit card fraud and one of obstruction, and was ordered held on $23,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail.

Reynoso and Mejia were each charged with obstruction and ordered held on $10,000 bail each.

Salcedo was ordered held on $6,000 bail.

The U.S. Secret Service joined New Milford police in investigating.

MUGSHOTS: Courtesy NEW MILFORD PD

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HAVE YOU SEEN HER? A troubled 17-year-old Little Ferry girl who made headlines when she ran away two years ago has done it again — only this time her father said he’s concerned that she might be involved in serious trouble.

Noelle Forte was supposedly staying overnight at the home of a female friend in Garfield this weekend, her father, Frank Forte, told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

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Noelle Forte
(ALL PHOTOS: Courtesy Frank Forte, Mary Makinajian)

“We thought they were having a sleepover on Saturday,” he said. “They were there a few hours before they took off. They said they were going to stay out for awhile, but they never came back.”

The 18-year-old friend has a criminal record, said Forte of Butler.

Noelle needs medication to control symptoms of psycho-effective disorder that include hallucinations.

“It’s going on well over 24 hours now,” Forte told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning, “so time is getting critical.”

Forte and his ex-wife, Mary Makinajian, adopted Noelle in Guatemala when she was 7 months old.

Two years ago, they turned to CLIFFVIEW PILOT after she ran away from St. Mary’s residential treatment center in Passaic for a second time in several months. She’d been been living with other girls who have similar conditions, her parents said.

“This isn’t a regular teenaged child who ran away,” her mother said at the time. “Her psychiatrist said she can only be off her meds for two days.

“She’ll start to hallucinate, see things, hear things, taste things,” Makinajian said. “She’ll feel like things are crawling on her, or that they’re in her head.”

Noelle previously spent a night in Manhattan, was taken into custody by the Port Authority police and was returned home before several stays at Bergen Regional Medical Center.

Her July 2013 disappearance ended after she and a friend saw fliers that her father had posted and distributed in Manhattan and New Jersey.

It turned out she’d been scraping by on the streets of Passaic and Paterson for several nights, her parents said.

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Defense attorney Robert Galantucci, John Wisse (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)

YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST: A defense attorney this afternoon entered a not-guilty plea for an 83-year-old Hasbrouck Heights man who authorities said killed his 58-year-old tenant with a single gunshot to the chest during an argument over the wekend.

John C. Wisse was formally charged in a Hackensack courtroom with aggravated manslaughter and illegal weapons possession in the death of Gerald Velardi Jr. at his two-family Passaic Street home late Saturday afternoon.

Several of Velardi’s relatives and loved ones attended the brief hearing, as did a man who was with Wisse and conferred with defense attorney Robert Galantucci.

Sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that Wisse — who didn’t say anything in court today — called 911 around 5 p.m. Saturday to report the shooting.

The .38-caliber handgun was recovered, authorities said.

Wisse returned to the Bergen County Jail, where he remained held on $750,000 bail, after today’s hearing.

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A grand jury in Hackensack today returned aggravated manslaughter charges against a Morris County man who authorities said beat his friend to death after their car crashed on Route 80 in Elmwood Park following a ZZ Top concert in Englewood.

Jared Clackner, 54, “left the scene of the injury knowing or reasonably believing that William K. Henning was physically helpless, mentally incapacitated or otherwise unable to care for himself,” the indictment returned today says.

This followed him “recklessly causing the death of [Henning] under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life,” it says.

Clackner was a passenger in a blue 1996 Oldmobile Sierra driven by Henning, 61, that New Jersey State Police said crashed into a guardrail at milepost 61.6 during an argument between the two Denville men following a BergenPAC concert the night of March 10.

Defense attorney Timothy Smith previously contended that authorities over-charged his client and that both threw punches.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Danielle Grootenboer countered that Clackner — a self-employed painter and father of two — beat his friend to death with his fists.

“It wasn’t even a fight,” she said adding that Henning never connected.

Clackner told State Police that he “hit him as hard as he could, then walked away” — leaving Henning to die of blunt-force trauma from the blows, which included several broken ribs, Grootenboer contended at an earlier court appearance.

Sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that when police arrived, Henning was partially out of the car, which was still in drive up against the guardrail. They picked up Clackner further down the highway, they said.

Clacknear has remained free on $300,000 bail, posted eight days after his arrest.
STORY / FILE PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Rutherford police tracked down and charged a motorist who they said took off after striking a bicyclist with his car on Route 17 last Thursday night.

Jorge A. Velasquez, 48, was being held on $100,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with aggravated assault, assault by auto, leaving the scene of a crash with serious bodily injury, endangering an injured victim and hindering his apprehension.

Velasquez was taken into custody and his car impounded after police, acting on a tip, found him in Belleville, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the arrest told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

The 32-year-old victim was headed from New York City to Pennsylvania when he stopped on the median between the southbound highway and the north service road near the Route 3 interchange to tend to a mechanical problem, Police Chief John Russo told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time.

The driver was in the center lane and “tried to make a last-ditch attempt to merge onto the service road by cutting across the median” when his dark-colored sedan with Maryland license plates hit the victim around 10:10 p.m., Russo said.

The cyclist landed on the hood, smashing the windshield and sustaining massive facial injuries, the chief said.

The victim, who’s from Bronson, Mich., was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, he said.

The driver then “backed up and took off towards the [Rutherford] north service road and local streets,” Russo said.

Witnesses told police the sedan sustained front-end damage along with the broken windshield.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF

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UPDATE: Harrison police recovered two missing girls, one from Garfield and the other from Little Ferry, after a Garfield police sergeant made contact with one of them, authorities said tonight.

Sgt. Mario Pozo connected with the girl, Harrison police were notified and both 17-year-olds were located, Capt. Darren Sucorowski told CLIFFVIEW PILOT tonight.

Their parents were notified, he said.

Garfield police had issued an alert earlier in the day, when Angel Reed and Noelle Forte were believed headed to the Jersey Shore or to Atlanta, Georgia

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Noelle Forte (COURTESY: Forte family)

Noelle — who needs medication to control symptoms of psycho-effective disorder that include hallucinations — was supposed to have stayed at Reed’s home overnight on Saturday, her father, Frank Forte, told CLIFFVIEW PILOT yesterday.

“We thought they were having a sleepover,” he said. “They were there a few hours before they took off. They said they were going to stay out for awhile, but they never came back.”

Forte and his ex-wife, Mary Makinajian, adopted Noelle in Guatemala when she was 7 months old.

Two years ago, they turned to CLIFFVIEW PILOT after she ran away from St. Mary’s residential treatment center in Passaic for a second time in several months. She’d been been living with other girls who have similar conditions, her parents said.

“This isn’t a regular teenaged child who ran away,” her mother said at the time. “Her psychiatrist said she can only be off her meds for two days.

“She’ll start to hallucinate, see things, hear things, taste things,” Makinajian said. “She’ll feel like things are crawling on her, or that they’re in her head.”

Noelle previously spent a night in Manhattan, was taken into custody by the Port Authority police and was returned home before several stays at Bergen Regional Medical Center.

Her July 2013 disappearance ended after she and a friend saw fliers that her father had posted and distributed in Manhattan and New Jersey.

It turned out she’d been scraping by on the streets of Passaic and Paterson for several nights, her parents said.

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PHOTOS: A driver got into an ambulance under his own steam after his Ford Expedition crashed into a utility pole in Glen Rock this morning.

A juvenile female passenger was uninjured in the mishap in the 11:45 a.m. crash at the corner of Glen and Maple avenues, which also took down a traffic sign.

Borough police and EMS responded. The vehicle was removed by flatbed tow truck.

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PHOTOS: Boyd A. Loving

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UPDATE: A Tennessee man waived extradition and was brought to New Jersey from Connecticut yesterday to face charges of sexually abusing a now-27-year-old woman at his previous home in Hackensack over the course of seven years, beginning when she was 7.

Alex Safanova, 62, was taken into custody in Lebanon, CT last Wednesday after Special Victims Unit investigators tracked him to a family member’s home there from Dayton, TN, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said at the time.

Safanova, who is married, faces two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one of sexual assault by contact.

He was being held on $300,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR

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ONLY ON CVP: Two men climbed out a window of their SUV after it was knocked on its side as they turned into the driveway of a Carlstadt strip club.

The Escape driver and his passenger, both 21 from Wayne, told police that they were headed to Stiletto off Paterson Plank Road just before 10:30 p.m. when their vehicle was hit by a Nissan Altima.

Both climbed through the driver’s side window and were taken to the hospital by ambulance, police said.

The Altima driver, a 27-year-old Paramus man, told police that he tried to stop but his brakes failed.

A witness said the Altima’s tires made “a loud screech” before slamming into the Ford.

Surveillance video shows nearly 175 feet of skidmarks, police said.

The Altima driver wasn’t injured, they said.

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PHOTOS: Michael Lisa

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UPDATE: Authorities suspect swatting in a pair of blocked-number bomb threats called in to Hackensack and Teaneck high schools this afternoon, leading to their evacuations.

“Day 1,” a law enforcement source told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “It’s starting already.”

The Hackensack caller said there were five devices in the building, another source said.

The Bergen County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad joined police and firefighters at both schools.

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Rochelle Park man already facing drug charges in Elmwood Park and Clifton was charged today with stealing and fencing $1,500 worth of musical equipment stolen from a neighboring garage.

Investigators recovered some of the amplifiers, microphones, and mixers after checking with local pawn shops and second-hand dealer, Detective Sgt. James DePreta told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this afternoon.

They also zeroed in on 27-year-old Rocco Riotto, a tenant in a home that shares the property with the garage, DePreta said.

Detectives arrested Riotto in front of the residence earlier today.

He was being held on $20,000 bail, charged with burglary and theft.

Elmwood Park police arrested Riotto in late July after they said they caught him carrying 16 bags of heroin and a hypodermic syringe when they found him in the parking lot of a local shopping center.

Rocco Riotto was turned over to Clifton police on a warrant following the 9:50 p.m. arrest at the Elmwood Shopping Center on Broadway, Police Chief Michael Foligno told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy ROCHELLE PARK PD

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: After watching a drug deal go down outside a local home, Upper Saddle River police arrested and charged the alleged seller and buyer.

Adam Bednarz was charged with distributing Roxicet and Lauren D’Amore of Mahwah charged with possession of the drug after she bought ten 30mg pills from him for $270, Detective Lt. Edward Kane told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this afternoon.

D’Amore was also carrying Klonopin, OxyContin, Suboxone, and drug paraphernalia, for which she was also charged, he said.

A search warrant of Bednarz’s home turned up a small quantity of codeine and Roxicet, Kane said.

Bednarz, 24, was being held on $10,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail. D’Amore, also 24, was released on her own recognizance.

Police “received a report of suspicious activity occurring during the daytime hours” outside the home, in the southeast part of the borough, Kane said.

D’Amore was in a car that pulled up to Bednarz’s home when officers witnessed the drug deal, he said.

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PHOTO: Four patrons were hospitalized, none with serious injuries, after two vehicles that got into an accident crashed into a Wendy’s on eastbound Route 4 that was the site of a previous crash in June.

The occupants of the sedan and minivan were fine following the crash just before 5 p.m., responders said.

But three adults and a minor who complained of pain were taken to area hospitals, while an unspecified number of other patrons received medical attention at the scene.

PHOTO ABOVE: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Senior Correspondent Kevin Teel

This is from the June 16 crash:

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PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Jon Ryan

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