YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Fair Lawn police charged a ShopRite cart collector with taking $330 in cash, a bank card and checkbook from a lost pocketbook that they said he found.
The victim came to police headquarters after midnight on Friday and said she realized she left the pocketbook in her shopping cart at the River Road supermarket.
The woman also told police the cart collector — identified as 21-year-old Jonathan Encarnacion — denied having seen it when she asked him.
Officer Luis Vasquez responded and found the pocketbook in a row of collected carts — missing the valuables, Sgt. Brian Metzler said this afternoon.
He and Officer Peter Federico went to Encarnacion’s house, where the told them that he took the cash and tossed the remaining valuable over a fence next to the supermarket, Metzler said. That where officers found them, the sergeant said.
Encarnacion was released pending a hearing on charges of theft of lost of mislaid property.