On Jan. 30, just after midnight, Officers Ryan Wilson, Paul Duran, Lawrence Latka and Sgt. Chris Levchak were dispatched to a domestic dispute at a boarding house. There, they learned that 25-year-old resident called his 37-year-old housemate a “fat as*” for eating a bowl of ice cream. This led to an argument in which the younger man fetched a metal pipe and threatened to hit the ice cream gourmand with it.
Officers arrested the alleged pipe-wielder on weapon-offenses and a terroristic-threats charge.
He was booked into the county jail.
On Jan. 29 at 7:18 p.m., Officer Derek Hemphill responded to a one-car crash on the Belleville Turnpike, just east of Schuyler Avenue, where off-duty Hudson County Sheriff’s Officer Jason Melendez was at the scene, but uninvolved. He reported to Officer Hemphill a white Hyundai had lost control on the “S-curve” of Belleville Turnpike while traveling at a high speed. The Hyundai then left the roadway, went up an embankment, through a fence and came to rest in the adjacent Arlington Cemetery.
After the driver complained of injury, Officer Melendez retrieved his phone to call an ambulance. When the sheriff’s officer returned to the Hyundai with Officer Hemphill, the driver was gone, leaving footprints in the new-fallen snow.
Officer Hemphill quickly learned the Hyundai had been reported stolen with the keys in it from Cranford the same day. The car had been sought minutes earlier by North Arlington police as a suspect vehicle used in a gunpoint robbery.
Officer Hemphill found a loaded Taurus model PT145 .45-caliber handgun on the car’s passenger-side floorboard. The gun had been reported stolen from Carteret. It was loaded with a Glock .40 caliber magazine containing 12 hollow-point bullets.
The mismatched magazine appeared to have caused the handgun slide to jam (It is unclear when the gun jammed or if this jam had any connection to the robbery.) A 10-round Taurus magazine and a single .45 caliber hollow-point bullet were next to the handgun.
Officer Chris Montes searched for the fleeing driver. About a mile east of the crash scene, he found Brian K. Ross, 22, of Jersey City, walking eastbound in the westbound lane of Belleville Turnpike. Ross was bleeding from the hand. Officer Montes stopped Ross, who was later identified as the driver. From Ross’s pocket, the officer recovered a .45 caliber hollow-point bullet and five .40 caliber hollow-point bullets.
Ross was arrested on charges of receiving stolen property, weapon possession, illegal possession of hollow-point bullets and a high-capacity magazine and several traffic offenses. He was remanded to the Hudson County Jail, South Kearny, with a detainer placed on him by North Arlington authorities related to their robbery investigation (more on that investigation next week.)
On Feb. 1 at 4:09 p.m., Officers John Donovan and Danny Maganinho took a report from a 26-year-old man who had walked into the police station and reported his 20-year-old girlfriend had become angry with him a week earlier and had struck him about the face, arms and torso, causing bruising that was still evident. A few hours later, the girlfriend turned herself in at police headquarters. She was charged with simple assault and released with a summons.
On Feb. 2 at 12:28 a.m., Officers Jose Perez-Fonseca and Anthony Oliveira responded to another one-car crash where a vehicle left the Belleville Turnpike and ended up in Arlington Cemetery (They say people are dying to get in).
In this case, a Nissan Pathfinder overturned and damaged some of the older headstones. Officer Oliveira found Charnette S. Ferril, 38, of Bay Shore, Long Island, New York, inside the overturned vehicle, screaming for help.
After helping her from the wreck, Officer Oliveira detected signs of alcohol impairment in Ferril. She was arrested after failing field-sobriety testing. Following breath testing at the police station, Ferril was charged with DWI and careless driving. She was later released.
On Feb. 2 at 2:59 a.m., Officers Bryan San Martin, David Vazquez, Luis Cazares and Sgt. Ben Wuelfing responded to an apartment building at 300 Hoyt St., on a report a trespasser was stealing items from a resident’s storage bin in the building’s garage.
Officers located the man, later identified as Mark A. Tullies, 36, of Newark, near the building’s elevator.
Tullies allegedly introduced himself to officers not by name, but by reciting his SBI number (An SBI – or State Bureau of Identification – number is a unique number assigned to an arrestee the first time they are fingerprinted.) After further investigation, the officers arrested Tullies.
The officers searched Tullies incident to arrest finding on his person nine sets of keys and/or vehicle key fobs and an RFID access card. Tullies was charged with burglary and later transferred to the Hudson County jail. Ownership of the many sets of keys and fobs remains under investigation.
On Feb. 2 at 4:25 p.m., Officers Mat Lopez and Cort Montanino were dispatched to the State Police Metro Station in Irvington where Troopers had John R. Dyer, 47, of Kearny, in custody. Dyer was wanted on a Kearny arrest warrant stemming from a July 2020 incident where he allegedly stole a bicycle from a Chestnut Street residential yard. In that case, Dyer had been charged by Kearny police with theft and defiant trespass. Officers booked Dyer and sent him to the county jail.
On Feb. 2 at 7:09 p.m., Sgt. Chris Levchak and Officers Bismark Karikari, Paul Duran and Ruben Rivera were dispatched to a private home for a report of domestic-violence knife attack. Once the scene was secured, officers learned a 30-year-old Newark man allegedly came to the home to collect belongings after being asked to move out a day earlier.
While retrieving his belongings, the man allegedly attacked his 30-year-old cousin with a folding knife. The victim had a minor laceration to his neck and reported he had been wearing a hood, which may have protected him from deeper cuts. Officers arrested the aggressor for aggravated assault and weapon charges. He was later lodged in the Hudson County Jail.
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Capt. Timothy Wagner | Kearny Police Department
Capt. Timothy Wagner is the Kearny Police Department's public-information officer and the commander of the department's Internal Affairs Unit. He contributes the KPD Blotter weekly and writes it completely.