Police composite of suspected shooter.
By Ron Leir
Observer Correspondent
LYNDHURST –
Police are seeking three men in connection with an armed robbery that took place last Thursday evening at Stuyvesant and Kingsland Aves.
Lyndhurst Police Detective Capt. John Valente gave this account of the incident:
At about 6 p.m. on Feb. 21, police received a 911 emergency call reporting that a man had been robbed at gunpoint and that shots had been fired. The caller directed police to a location in the 500 block of Stuyvesant Ave.
The 26-year-old male victim told officers he’d just walked up from the ground floor to his second-floor apartment, with three individuals having followed him inside.
As he opened the apartment door and started to go inside, he was pulled from behind and down to the first landing where they demanded money from him.
Instead, the man began struggling with his assailants and, after apparently hearing the commotion, the man’s 21-year-old girlfriend, holding a cellular phone, stepped out of the apartment and saw them fighting.
Spotting her, one of the intruders turned to her, produced a handgun and demanded the phone but, believing the weapon to be fake, she refused and stepped back into the apartment.
Soon after, she called 911 and reported hearing shots fired. The three attackers fled on foot in an unknown direction. Responding to the location, police recovered a few spent shell casings which have been sent to a police ballistics lab for testing. They also found that one round had grazed a wall and another had been fired into the ceiling of a hallway leading to the secondfloor apartment.
No one was hurt in the incident but $200 in cash was taken from the victim.
Police released this description of the suspects: One is white, in his late 20s or early 30s, about 5-foot-eight, about 185, with short slick-back black hair; the second is white, about 30, about 6 feet, of slender build, with short blond hair; the third is possibly Latino, in his mid- to late-20s, about 5-feet-eight, about 185.
Police are asking anyone with information about the incident to call the Lyndhurst Police Criminal Investigation Division at 201-939-2900, ext. 2740, or the LPD’s Anonymous Tip Hot Line at 201-804-9346. All information will be kept confidential.
