A would-be burglar came up empty in a big way in Lyndhurst on Christmas Day.
Police said officers responded to a residence in the 100 block of Livingston Ave., at 5:14 a.m., on Dec. 25 on a report of an attempted entry.
The occupant told police that after hearing a loud noise from outside her third-floor apartment window, she looked outside and saw a man lifting up a screen and begin to open a window to the second-floor apartment below.
After a light came on in that apartment, she said, the intruder closed the screen and retreated across the roof, only to fall to the ground below, landing on a shrub. The man then got up and ran west on Lake Ave., she told police.
Police said a physical description of the man was radioed to responding officers who located a man matching the description on Stuyvesant Ave. near Lake.
The suspect, Andy Paredes, 30, of Elmhurst, N.Y., suffered what police described as minor injuries from the fall and declined medical attention.
Police said a check of the roof area and outside of the Livingston Ave. residence uncovered damage to a leader pipe and gutter and broken branches to the shrub consistent with the witness’s account of the incident.
Peredes was charged with burglary and criminal mischief and taken to the Bergen County Jail on $5,000 bail with no 10% cash option.
– Ron Leir
