COP-ASSAULT SUSPECT CAUGHT

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, August 28, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B03

A 20-year-old city man wanted for assaulting a policeman in March was arrested Tuesday after a brief chase and a scuffle with an officer, police said.
John Hawkins of 230 Central Ave. had just stolen a car and was eastbound on Mary Street when Hackensack detectives, in the area on an unrelated investigation, spotted him at about 1 a.m. at a stop sign on Polifly Road, police said.
When Hawkins tried to run one of the unmarked police cars off the road, police said, the stolen car a 1985 Cadillac Eldorado careened into a wall under the Route 80 overpass on Polifly Road. Hawkins fled on foot before being caught by a detective and a dog from the Bergen County Police Canine Unit, authorities said.
In the ensuing scuffle, a loaded .38-caliber handgun was taken from Hawkins, police said. He kicked the police dog in the face and continued fighting after he was disarmed, police said.
Hackensack police Officer Michael Williams, while patrolling on March 2, had attempted to arrest Hawkins in Carver Park for a Jan. 18 contempt-of-court warrant from Lodi. Hawkins allegedly bit Williams on the hand and punched him in the face several times before fleeing on foot.
Police had been looking for him since.
Hawkins was being held in the Bergen County Jail Tuesday on $50,500 bail. He was charged with the March 2 aggravated assault on Williams, and also received several charges from Tuesday’s incident. Those charges include illegal possession of a weapon, possession of cocaine, assault on a police officer, assault on a police dog, possession of burglary tools, and theft and burglary of the car.

Keywords: HACKENSACK; POLICE; ASSAULT

FUND-RAISING ACCUSATIONS FAMILIAR TO PAL

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, August 28, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01

The arrest Monday of two men for allegedly passing themselves off as police officers to obtain $1,000 on behalf of the Hackensack Police Athletic League was not the first time a fund-raiser for the organization has come under scrutiny.
Five men hired by a Connecticut fund-raising firm were acquitted of charges stemming from their January 1985 arrest for solicitation of funds under false pretenses to benefit the group.
The men had been charged with using aliases instead of their real names in soliciting funds. Although police accused them then of impersonating officers in their pitch, they were never formally charged on those counts.
The Hackensack police said the Hackensack PAL is not connected to the department.
John Simonelli and Mark Carter, employees of Theatrical Marketing Services of Middletown, were arrested Monday and were being held in the Bergen County Jail on Tuesday on $7,500 bail each.
In 1990, Theatrical Marketing Services a Monmouth County firm raised about $106,000 on behalf of the Hackensack PAL, according to a financial statement filed with the Consumer Affairs Division. About $31,800 went to the PAL, with the firm and an office manager dividing the remainder.
Simonelli, of Pawtucket, R.I., was arrested after he gave John Carrino of Race Excavations Co. on Sussex Street a receipt for a $1,000 check that Carrino had given him in the presence of a detective, police said.
Carter, of Feeding Hills, Mass., was arrested shortly afterward at the 302 Ridge Road, Lyndhurst, office of the fund-raising firm. Police said they recorded a telephone conversation between Carter and Carrino in which Carter told Carrino several times that he was a member of the Hackensack Police Department.
Both were charged with wrongful impersonation of a police officer and theft by deception.
Ollie Hartsfield, a spokeswoman for the state Consumer Affairs Division, said they have no record of complaints about impersonations against Theatrical Marketing Services. The company has contracts with a number of other PALs around the state, she added.
Charles McHarris Jr., PAL executive director, said he did not find out about the arrests until Tuesday but declined to comment until he consults with the group’s lawyer. He said, however, that Simonelli and Carter were innocent of the charges against them.
No representative of Theatrical Marketing Services could be reached at the Lyndhurst or Middletown office.

Keywords: HACKENSACK; POLICE; FINANCE; FRAUD; PROBE

2 ACCUSED OF POSING AS POLICE OFFICERS; SOLICITED $1,000 FROM BUSINESSMAN

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Tuesday, August 27, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01

Two men from a fund-raising firm hired by the Hackensack Police Athletic League were arrested Monday on charges that they passed themselves off as officers to solicit $1,000 from a city businessman, police said.
John Simonelli of Pawtucket, R.I., was arrested about noon after he gave John Carrino of Race Excavations Co. on Sussex Street a receipt for a $1,000 check that Carrino gave him in the presence of a detective, police said.
When the detective, who was posing as one of the owners of the excavation company, asked Simonelli why the department did not send a uniformed officer, he told the detective all the uniformed officers were busy, police said.
Mark Carter of Feeding Hills, Mass., was arrested shortly after Simonelli at the Lyndhurst offices of the fund-raising firm, T.M.S. Fund Raising Co., of 302 Ridge Road.
Police said they taped a telephone conversation between Carter and Carrino in which Carter told Carrino several times that he was a member of the Hackensack Police Department.
Simonelli and Carter both were charged with wrongful impersonation of a police officer and theft by deception. They were being held in the Bergen County Jail on $7,500 bail each.
Carrino’s donation would entitle his business advertisement to be placed on the inside front cover of the Hackensack PAL “Drug and Alcohol Prevention Handbook and Business Directory,” the receipt said.
No one answered the telephone or returned a message left on the answering machine at the PAL’s Hackensack office. Representatives for T.M.S. could not be reached for comment. Carrino also could not be reached Monday.
Patrolman Charles Redstone, president of the Hackensack local of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said that although the athletic league has “Hackensack” as part of its name, it is in no way connected to the Hackensack Police Department.
The athletic league’s fund campaign often confuses residents and businesses that the PBA solicits during the fall to raise money for charity, he said. People often call the PBA to say they had already contributed money to the “Hackensack police,” he said.
Complaints of deception by telephone solicitors for police-related groups are common statewide, officials say. Investigators say the solicitors, who work on commission, often imply, if they don’t state it outright, that they are members of the local police department.
“Most people, when they hear it’s a police department, will donate money because they think it is a worthwhile cause,” said Redstone.

Keywords: FRAUD; POLICE; HACKENSACK; CHARITY

SPECIAL DELIVERY FOR PAIR

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN | Sunday, August 25, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A08

A routine call to pick up a dialysis patient Saturday morning turned joyous for two emergency medical technicians and a couple whose baby girl they helped deliver in the Holy Name Hospital parking lot.
Frank Sapienza and Carl Putkowski Jr. of Adamo Medical Services in Pompton Plains were at the back of an ambulance about 10:25 a.m. preparing to take a 79-year-old Garfield man home when a car screeched into the lot.
An agitated man came running out of his car toward the men. “My wife, my wife, she is having a baby,” the man said to Putkowski.
Sapienza and Putkowski, neither of whom had delivered a baby before, ran to the car.
At 10:30 a.m., in the back of a blue Ford Taurus, they assisted in the birth of an 8-pound, 3-ounce girl.
“It was an experience beyond belief,” Putkowski said. “It’s such a heartwarming feeling, to bring a life into the world. That is just something spectacular.”
A nursing supervisor at the hospital confirmed the men’s exploits but was unable to provide additional information on the birth or the family.

Keywords: TEANECK; BABY; PEQUANNOCK; GARFIELD; AMBULANCE; RESCUE

AIRPORT DRUG BUST SETS RECORD 40 POUNDS OF HEROIN SEIZED

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, August 24, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

Customs agents arrested two sisters arriving at Newark Airport from Sweden on Thursday with about 40 pounds of heroin, worth $18 million on the street, authorities said Friday.
“This is the largest heroin seizure at Newark International Airport,” said Robert Van Etten, special agent in charge for the U.S. Customs Service.
The previous largest shipment seized at the airport was 11.7 pounds on Oct. 11, 1990, Van Etten said. “As the number of international flights at Newark Airport increases, U.S. Customs has seen an increase in narcotics smuggling at Newark,” he added.
Judy Merle Corbin, 42, of Atlanta and her sister, Sandra Sue Corbin, 41, of Kansas City, Mo., were arrested about 6:30 p.m. Thursday in possession of a suitcase and roller bag that had secret compartments and false bottoms filled with heroin, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ana T. Escobar.
Van Etten said the women were couriers for a Nigerian heroin-smuggling organization. The organization shipped the heroin from Thailand to Sweden, then employed the women to bring it into the United States, he said.
Van Etten declined to disclose what led Customs to the women or the circumstances of the arrest. He did say that the women had lengthy criminal records.
They were charged with importing heroin and were being held without bail in the custody of U.S. marshals, Escobar said.

Keywords: NEWARK; AVIATION; DRUG; CRIME; RECORD

MAN, 23, FATALLY SHOT OUTSIDE HIS HOME

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, August 22, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B03

A 23-year-old man was fatally shot in front of his home Tuesday night by a man who had come to his door asking for water for his car radiator, officials said.
Sergio Novo died at 3:55 a.m. in the surgical intensive care unit of University Hospital in Newark of a gunshot wound to the head, a hospital spokesman said.
Investigators do not know the motive for the shooting, nor do they have a suspect, said Bergen County First Assistant Prosecutor Paul Brickfield. Authorities do not believe robbery was a motive, he added.
“We are actively investigating his movements over the last few days and his associations and activities to try to come up with who might have had a motive to shoot him, or if this was a random activity,” Brickfield said.
Shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday, Brickfield said, an unidentified man knocked on the door at 30 Truman Road, where Novo lived with his parents and grandmother. Novo went outside with a pitcher of water for the man, who had requested it for his car radiator.
Shortly afterward, Novo’s family and neighbors heard a “metallic noise and the sound of a car screeching,” Brickfield said. A neighbor went outside and found Novo lying on the street.
Brickfield said witnesses saw a late-model, four-door car, blue or black, possibly a Buick Century or Electra, stopped in the middle of Truman Road.
On Wednesday afternoon, John Penetra, whose son Luis was a friend of the victim, went to visit Novo’s family at their single-family home at the corner of Halsey Place and Truman Road. No one answered the door.
Penetra had heard about the shooting and wanted to find out if it were true.
“Sergio, he’s a beautiful man,” Penetra said in heavily accented English. “What a shame. I can’t believe this.”
He spoke in Spanish with a woman on Halsey Place; she told him no one had seen the shooting but that afterward everyone had come out of their homes.
Other neighbors, including a woman who said Novo was “a nice young fellow,” declined to comment or to be identified.
Novo had been a New Jersey Bell cable installer for the past 16 months and was a U.S. Navy veteran, officials said.
The shooting is being investigated by North Arlington police, the homicide squad of the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department.
Anyone with information is asked to call the North Arlington police at 991-4400 or the homicide squad at 646-2300.

Keywords: NORTH ARLINGTON; SHOOTING; DEATH; MURDER

COP’S GUN GOES OFF; TEENAGER HIT IN ARM

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Tuesday, August 20, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page B03

A state trooper wounded a Bronx teenager in the arm Sunday when his service gun went off accidentally during a traffic stop, officials said.
Louis Mancuso, the 17-year-old passenger in a car stopped for alleged speeding, was in fair condition at Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center in Secaucus, a hospital spokesman said Monday.
Trooper Joseph Genova, a three-year veteran of the state police, was not criminally negligent in the shooting, Bergen County First Assistant Prosecutor Paul Brickfield said Monday.
“Our conclusion at this point is that it was an accidental discharge of the weapon,” Brickfield said.
The incident occurred about 8:15 a.m. Sunday in the northbound lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike in East Rutherford, said Lt. William Hillis, a state police spokesman.
Genova, on patrol in an unmarked car, clocked a 1990 Nissan 300 ZX driven by Vincent Gaudio, 18, of the Bronx at 31 mph over the 55 mph speed limit, police said.
Hillis said Genova, 23, saw a box of ammunition in an open glove compartment while examining Gaudio’s driver’s license.
“He ordered the driver to step out of the car,” Hillis said. “The passenger was ordered to place his hands on the dash. The passenger did not comply, and was again instructed to place his hands on the dash. He made a movement toward the glove box.
“The trooper, fearing a weapon may be in the glove box, drew his service weapon, and the weapon accidentally discharged and struck the passenger in the right bicep.”
No weapon was found in the car.

Keywords: EAST RUTHERFORD; POLICE; ACCIDENT; WEAPON; SHOOTING; YOUTH

TWO DIE IN RTE. 80 COLLISION; CAR REAR-ENDS TRUCK ON SLICK HIGHWAY

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Tuesday, August 20, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01

A Bronx couple were killed and their two children injured Monday morning when their car spun out of control on rain-soaked Route 80 in Bogota and struck the back of a truck parked on the shoulder, state police said.
Haredin Sokoli, 33, who was driving, and his common-law wife, Farije Xheraj, 32, died at the scene. Neither was wearing a seat belt, state police Sgt. Bob Cooney said.
Lide Sokoli, 11, and her brother, Niam, 10, were in fair condition at Hackensack Medical Center, the girl with a broken leg and the boy with cuts and bruises, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Dr. John LoCurto, director of the hospital’s trauma center, and paramedics Don Holmes and Zach Weissman, as well as numerous Ridgefield Park police, firefighters, and rescue workers, helped remove the children from the back seat, where they were pinned.
Bob Carlson, a senior member of the Ridgefield Park Rescue Squad, said they had to use air bags and hydraulic lifts to raise the truck to allow the paramedics to get to the children.
The accident occurred at 11:35 a.m. in the local lanes of Route 80, about a half-mile from the intersection of Routes 95 and 46, Cooney said.
“There was a truck parked on the right shoulder, eastbound at milepost 67.4 in Bogota, due to a previous accident,” he said. “A 1985 Buick Century was eastbound when the driver lost control for an unknown reason on the wet roadway. It struck the left rear of the parked truck.”
Jeannette Gnecco, 41, of Ridgefield Park, said she saw the traffic jam about noon and noticed the accident ahead. She got off the road an exit before the accident and watched the rescue effort, along with about 30 other people, from the North Street bridge, which overlooks Route 80.
“The had to jack up the truck, pull off the roof of the car to get to the kids,” said James Gnecco, her 46-year-old husband. “You almost couldn’t believe anybody came out of it alive.”
Gail Campbell, 45, of Ridgefield Park also watched the rescue effort with her 12-year-old son, Mark. Her husband, Edward, a 10-year member of the rescue squad, was part of the rescue effort.
“It upsets me,” Campbell said. “Those poor people didn’t know what hit them. . . . Pray for them. That’s all you can do.”

Keywords: BOGOTA; MOTOR VEHICLE; ACCIDENT; DEATH

Caption: 2 COLOR PHOTOS BY DANIELLE P. RICHARDS / THE RECORD 1 – A rescue worker holding a child who was trapped in the back seat of a car involved in a fatal accident on Route 80 in Bogota. 2 – The Bronx couple in the front seat died, and their two children were hospitalized with injuries.

KILLER’S REQUEST FOR PAROLE IS REJECTED

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, August 10, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Two Star B | NEWS | Page A03

A request for parole by Christopher Righetti serving a life sentence for the 1976 rape and murder of a 20-year-old New Milford woman was rejected this week, the state Parole Board’s executive director said Friday.
Robert Egles said the panel, weighing the seriousness of Righetti’s crime, also ordered a hearing on whether his next eligibility date in three years should be delayed.
Kim Montelaro, a journalism and English student at the University of Rhode Island, had gone shopping at Paramus Park Mall when she was abducted on Aug. 31, 1976, raped, then stabbed several times in the chest. Her body was found in a ravine near Washington Township’s Pine Lake Beach Club a few days later.
Righetti maintained through most of his trial that the killing had been an act of self-defense or an accident. In a hearing to determine whether he would tried as an adult, Righetti, then 16, claimed Montelaro lured him into her car, had sex with him, then turned on him with his knife.
Righetti’s lawyer abandoned the self-defense claim on the last day of trial, saying his client should be convicted of manslaughter.
In appeals of his murder conviction, the last one in 1982, a public defender contended Righetti’s police lineup appearance was illegal. The evidence was insufficient to compel Righetti to appear in the lineup during the search for Montelaro’s killer, the lawyer said.
But Righetti’s alibi witnesses failed to show up during his trial and prosecutors proved a knife and sheath found at the scene matched items he admitted purchasing shortly before the killing.
At age 15, Righetti was released from the state Training School for Boys and Girls after serving 13 months for raping an 18-year-old woman in a Bergen County park in 1974. In March 1976, he accosted another woman at knifepoint and demanded a ride home, but charges were not pressed after authorities assured the victim Righetti would receive psychiatric help.

Keywords: NEW MILFORD; MURDER; PRISON; WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP; KIDNAPPING; PARAMUS

A BURGLARY SPREE ENDS ON NIGHT OUT; UNION CITY POLICE ARREST PAIR OF TEENS

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Friday, August 9, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | One Star | NEWS | Page B03

A nightmare ended for Roosevelt Street residents Tuesday night when they came out on their front porches to mark National Night Out against crime, Mayor Robert Menendez said.
Police led two teenagers who may have burglarized as many as 50 homes in the city including eight that night, and many of them on Roosevelt Street out of a house on the street about 30 minutes after the Night Out events began.
“One of them, a juvenile, told us they did so many he lost count,” Union City police Detective Brian Barrett said.
The juvenile, a 17-year-old boy, confessed to more burglaries 50 than police could charge him with. They could verify only 18.
Jeffrey Sweeney, 18, was arrested with the youth and was charged with eight of the burglaries. Sweeney is a student on the dean’s list at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, Menendez said.
It was ironic that the two were arrested on National Night Out in a neighborhood where residents were beginning to feel besieged by the rash of burglaries, Menendez added.
Barrett and Detective Thomas Callahan had been investigating the burglaries since a Roosevelt Street home was broken into on May 5, the mayor said.
Barrett said the first lead came last week when an informant told authorities that the juvenile was responsible for the burglaries.
The two were arrested at an apartment the youth rented from a homeowner who found him in his hallway, about to burglarize his home last week, Barrett said. The youth had convinced the man that he wanted to rent an apartment, paid a month’s rent on the spot, and moved in Aug. 1, Barrett said.
“The juvenile told the man he was 22 years old,” Barrett said. The youth, who had lived alone for about two years and weighed about 220 pounds, looked older than his age, Barrett added.
The youth told police that when word got to him that the police were on his trail, he staged a burglary of his own apartment and the one below his on Tuesday to make himself look like a victim, rather than a suspect, Barrett said.
The plan backfired because police, while investigating that burglary, found credit cards, jewelry, and electronic and video equipment from other burglaries during the past three months in his apartment, Barrett said.
Barrett and Callahan began watching the house about 6 p.m. National Night Out events began on Roosevelt Street at 8 p.m.
McGruff the Crime Dog was on hand. The block was closed off, a searchlight went on, and a band started playing.
“We thought that would blow it for us,” Barrett said.
But they saw the two suspects going up the stairs right about then. The teens cooperated when they were confronted, Barrett said.
Barrett said Sweeney was released to the custody of a parent and that the youth was being held in the Hudson County Juvenile Detention Center.

Keywords: UNION CITY; THEFT