UPDATE: A Warren County man admitted in a Hackensack courtroom this week that he led a ring that stole $300,000 worth of heavy equipment from construction sites in Lyndhurst and elsewhere.

Michael J. Troncone, 34, (above, left) who faces eight years in prison in exchange for his plea, said the crew sold the equipment fom a vacant lot in Newark to buyers from New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

“The defendant’s thefts threatened the livelihood of many small contractors and builders in New Jersey and delayed projects that were in the process of completion,” Acting New Jersey Attorney General John J. Hoffman said.

“Given that this equipment was insured, the cost of this theft was not just borne by the contractors, its burden was carried by all those participate in the insurance market, which is a substantial portion of New Jersey’s population,” added Acting Insurance Fraud Prosecutor Ronald Chillemi. “So when you read stories about theft, know that the thief could be stealing from you, too.”

Investigators from Chillemi’s office were tipped of by police in several towns, including Lyndhurst Detective Michael Lemonowicz and Ramsey police.

They then used remotely-operated surveillance cameras, tracking devices and digital forensics to collect evidence of Toncone and a co-conspirator, Marc Fucetola, 38, of Blairstown (above, middle), stealing equipment from construction sites “during late evening or early morning hours,” Hoffman said.

Investigators in October arrested Troncone, Fucetola and 40-year-old Craig Slaaen of Livingston (above, right). Search warrants were executed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

At least 21 pieces of heavy equipment valued at several hundred thousand dollars were recovered:

• 2013 Takeuchi TB153FR mini-excavator with an approximate value of $65,000
• 2014 John Deere 35G Compact Excavator, with an approximate value of $58,100
• 2006 Bobcat S300 Skid-Steer, with an approximate value of $28,250
• 2006 Bobcat S250 Skid-Steer, with an approximate value of $28,250
• 2006 Case 420 Skid-Steer, with an approximate value of $22,700
• 2005 Caterpillar 232-B Skid-Steer, with an approximate value of $17,950
• 2002 Bobcat T-190 Skid-Steer, with an approximate value of $14,300
• 2014 John Deer Gator ATV, with an approximate value of $10,243
• 1998 Case 85XT Skid-Steer with an approximate value of $9,500
• 2006 Wacker Generator valued at $24,895
• 2008 ODB Leaf Vacuum
• two 2014 John Deere Zero-turn Mowers
• several trailers including enclosed trailers and flatbed-type trailers

Lt. Joseph Waters and Detective Amy Carson led the investigation, with assistance from Detectives Jonathan Berman, Christopher Schell, Robert Rosa, Janet Amberg, and Michael Behar and Analyst Marwa Kashef.

Deputy Attorney General Reid Caster is handling the case for the state.

The cases against Fucetola and Slaaen were pending.

Chillemi also thanked: Lemonowicz of Lyndhurt, Lo-Jack, New Jersey State Police, Pennsylvania State Police, the Division of Criminal Justice Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU), New Providence Detective Andrew Diamond, Hanover Detective Lt. John Fox and the Ramsey and Totowa police departments, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the National Insurance Crime Bureau and the National Equipment Registry.

CLIFFVIEW PILOT photos: Maria D.L. Angeles

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A local man wanted by authorities was carrying a knife when he was shot and killed after assaulting two officers who followed him into the Lyndhurst Library this afternoon, law enforcement authorities told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

No one else was injured.

“All of the officers are OK,”  Police Chief James O’Connor told CLIFFVIEW PILOT less than a half-hour after the shooting, which occurred on the library’s third floor around 1:30 p.m.

Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli later confirmed a CLIFFVIEW PILOT report that the suspect — identified as 36-year-old Kevin Allen — was pronounced dead after being taken to an area hospital.

The two officers were also taken to Hackensack University Medical Center be treated for shock.

Allen’s criminal record includes an arrest for criminal sexual contact eight years ago and a previous drug conviction out of Passaic County.

He spent nearly two weeks in the Bergen County Jail on a disorderly persons conviction and failing to pay fines before fleeing a work release program in early April, records show. A judge then issued a contempt of court warrant for his arrest.

Officers this afternoon spotted Allen walking into the library next to the police station on Valley Brook Avenue and followed him inside, O’Connor said.

Molinelli’s detectives interviewed witnesses, including a child, and the Bergen County Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Identification collected evidence.

The area surrounding the 300 block of Valley Brook Avenue was closed to all pedestrian and vehicular traffic. 

CLIFFVIEW PILOT photos: Maria D.L. Angeles

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Lyndhurst parolee was wearing a monitoring bracelet when he was arrested following a car burglary, police said.

A witness told officers who responded Saturday night to a call of a panhandler in the 500 block of New York Avenue that the suspect entered an unlocked car parked in a private driveway and took off with a small amount of change, Capt. John Valente told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

Police found Gabriel Martinez Serrantes, 41, on Ridge Road near the Kingsland Train Station. He was carrying $10 in loose change — and wearing the monitoring bracelet, Valente said.

Brought to headquarters, Serrantes threatened officers during processing, the captain said.

In an ironic twist, Serrantes had a hearing scheduled this week for a Passaic County judge to consider ordering the bracelet removed.

He was being held on $10,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with burglary, resisting arrest, making terroristic threats and disorderly conduct.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy LYNDHURST PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A 45-year-old volunteer firefighter and recreational football coach from Lyndhurst used an iPod hidden in a closet to record video of people using the family bathroom during a pool party for his son, authorities who arrested him this morning said.

Mitchell Morreale was released without bail this morning after borough detectives arrested him on a single charge of invasion of privacy.

A squad captain and seven-year borough fire department veteran, Morreale has been suspended from the fire department pending the outcome of the case, Lyndhurst Fire Chief Paul Haggerty told CLIFFVIEW PILOT tonight.

“I’m shocked, speechless,” Haggerty said.

The women — three from Lyndhurst and one from Kearny, ages 18 and 19 — came into headquarters last night to report the incident, which occurred at Morreale’s Livingston Avenue home last Friday night, Capt. John Valente told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this afternoon.

One of them said she’d noticed a light from a closet while in the first-floor bathroom that day, looked closer and found the iPod recording her, he said.

The women used their own phones to capture the half-hour worth of recording made on the iPod of people using the bathroom — and of Morreale setting it up — and put it on a thumb drive, Valente said.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy LYNDHURST PD

EXCLUSIVE REPORT: A former East Rutherford ex-con had his 6-month-old son with him while he was serviced by a prostitute in a Lyndhurst hotel room, then wheeled the boy to a 7-Eleven for a 4 a.m. snack, authorities told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

A patrol officer followed 34-year-old Christopher Wady of Cherry Hill as he pushed the baby stroller into the Rutherford Avenue convenience store before dawn Saturday and noticed that he was under the influence of some type of drug, Capt. John Valente said.

Wady a short time earlier had a prostitute come to his room at the nearby Courtyard by Marriott with the baby there, Valente said.

A search of the room turned up a hypodermic syringe, he said.

Local workers with the state Division of Child Protection & Permanency (DCCP) responded to police headquarters, summoned the boy’s mother and placed him with her, Valente said.

The case was being referred to DCPP’s Camden County office, he said.

Wady, meanwhile, remained held on $100,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with child endangerment and possession of the syringe.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy LYNDHURST PD

ONLY ON CVP: A Brooklyn man told a Lyndhurst police officer who stopped him that he took a shopping bag-full of illegal prescription pills from a friend who couldn’t pay a $7,000 debt, authorities said.

Nasim Bhatti, 37, was stopped at Marginal and Ridge roads in Rutherford for doing 44 miles an hour in a 25mph zone last Friday night, Capt. John Valente told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and no had no registration or insurance for the 2007 Nissan, he said.

Bhattai first tried to claim he got the drugs from a company he worked for six years ago, but “the expiration dates on the bottles was 2017,” Valente said.

Charged with illegal drug possession and distribution counts, Bhatti posted $100,000 bail and was released yesterday from the Bergen County Jail pending grand jury action.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy LYNDHURST PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Responders rescued a Lyndhurst couple who climbed onto a lower roof from a second-floor bedroom during an overnight house blaze.

The 45-year-old man and 35-year-old woman were taken to Hackensack University Medical Center to be treated for smoke inhalation after Lyndhurst Fire Chief Paul Haggerty and Police Sgt. Andrew Marmorato used a ground ladder to reach them on the peaked lower roof, Police Capt. John Valente told CLIFFVIEW PILOT following the 3:51 a.m. fire.

At the same time, Officers Nick Abruscato and Joseph White tried getting into the basement and first floor to search for the 64-year-old homeowner but were pushed back by smoke.

It turned out he wasn’t home, Valente said.

Authorities located the owner, who became distraught when he learned that his three cats died in the blaze. He was taken to Clara Maas Hospital in Belleville, the captain said.

No emergency responders were injured.

“The preliminary report is that the fire is believed to have possibly started in the basement,” he said, “but it is under investigation.”

The single-family home had no working smoke alarms, but Abruscato was driving by on his way home from work, noticed smoke and alerted firefighters, said Haggerty, the fire chief.

Haggerty credited an aggressive interior attack with quickly putting down the blaze, but the building department deemed the home inhabitable.

The North Arlington Fire Department FAST Team responded, along with local police, while the Rutherford and East Rutherford fire departments stood by at the borough fire house.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Lyndhurst police charged two men with the baseball bat beating of a borough resident last night after a bystander recorded it on a cellphone and texted it to the victim.

Officers found the 21-year-old victim face-down in the grass of a curb off Forest and Grand avenues near the high school at 11:35 p.m., Detective Capt. John Valente told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

He was unresponsive and had a “strong odor of alcohol,” Valente said.

“Who’s there?” he said when an officer shook him awake.

“I can’t get up. I got jumped,” the victim told police.

He then showed them the texted video, recorded at a Forest Avenue residence.

“He was getting the better of one of the two, and that one then yelled at the other to get the bat,” Valente said. “After he gets hit with the bat, he runs out of the house.”

Officers went to the home and arrested 20-year-old Colin McGill (above, left), who lives there, the captain said.

They then notified Rutherford police, who picked up local resident Julian Lopez, 19, as he was walking home.

Both were charged with aggravated assault and two weapons possession counts and ordered held on $50,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail.

The victim was released from Hackensack University Medical Center early this morning after being trated for bruises on his forehead, neck and shoulders.

Meanwhile, detectives were investigating the source of the video, with criminal charges likely to follow.

“Whoever took it wasn’t helping the victim,” Valente said.

MUGSHOTS: Courtesy LYNDHURST PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Two fatal police shootings in Bergen County that occurred eight days apart in May will be presented to a grand jury under guidelines that acting New Jersey Attorney General John J. Hoffman issued two weeks ago, Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said this morning.

The first involved an ex-con with a lengthy criminal history who charged at Hackensack police officers with a large knife on May 21 in what authorities said was an apparent suicide-by-cop.

The second involved a Lyndhurst man who authorities said was carrying a knife when he was shot and killed after assaulting two officers who followed him into the local library on May 29.

ALSO SEE: Body cameras, new procedures for use-of-force investigations coming to NJSP, local police

Kevin Allen, 36, had a criminal record that included an arrest for criminal sexual contact eight years ago and a previous drug conviction out of Passaic County.

He spent nearly two weeks in the Bergen County Jail on a disorderly persons conviction and failing to pay fines before fleeing a work release program in early April, records show. A judge then issued a contempt of court warrant for his arrest.

Lyndhurst officers spotted him walking into the library next to the police station on Valley Brook Avenue and followed him inside, Police Chief James O’Connor told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time.

Molinelli’s detectives interviewed witnesses, including a child, and the Bergen County Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Identification collected evidence.

Eight days earlier, 24-year-old Elvin Jesus Diaz was shot after charging Hackensack officers who’d gone to his parents’ Temple Avenue home on a probation check.

“This was a scenario in which he forced the officers’ hands,” City Police Director Michael Mordaga told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time. “It wasn’t a scenario where the officers had any kind of discretion.

“He outright charged at them.”

A records check by CLIFFVIEW PILOT turned up several incidents involving Diaz the past five years:

After family members reported him missing in late July 2010, he set fire to his car on Johnson Avenue and was rushed to the hospital after city firefighters pulled him out, Mordaga said. Police later charged him with arson.

Three months later, officers responded to his parents’ home because he was acting violently, the director said. They subdued Diaz and an ambulance took him to Bergen Regional Medical Center, he said.

In January 2012, family members again reported him missing.

Diaz was arrested on drug charges in May 2013 and again a month later on a drug-related warrant, criminal records show. He pleaded guilty and received probation.

Diaz was suspected in a burglary when officers approached him in December 2014 and he turned on them, sending one to the hospital, Mordaga said. He was charged with assault on police, resisting arrest and obstruction, then posted $15,000 bail and was released three days later from the Bergen County Jail.

Two weeks after that, Diaz was issued a disorderly person’s summons for an unspecified incident, the director said.

A family friend told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that he’d moved back to Hackensack after a brief stay in Florida last year and was living with his Dominican-born mother in the home at 10 Temple Avenue that his parents, Julian and Cecilia, bought near the corner of Main Street 15½ years ago.

Diaz had been diagnosed depressive and complained to friends that he’d had trouble finding work because of people’s reactions to his neck and facial tattoos, several of which he’d recently gotten.

Under Hoffman’s new guidelines, prosecutors must present police-involved shootings to a grand jury for independent review “unless the undisputed facts indicate that the use of force was justified under the law.”

If a prosecutor doesn’t go to grand jury, the state Division of Criminal Justice must approve the decision after “substantive review.”

“The decision to present these matters to the [g]rand [j]ury is made in accordance with the New Jersey Attorney General Directive 2006–5, as modified on July 28, 2015,” Molinelli said today

“The public should be aware that, in accordance with state law and court rule, all proceedings concerning the [g]rand [j]ury are to remain absolutely confidential and no information can be released regarding either of these cases while such matters remain pending,” the prosecutor added.

“For this reason, no details of either incident or any part of the investigation which has been completed will be released to the public under any circumstances,” he said.

Molinelli said his office hadn’t yet complete an investigation into the June 11 fatal Hackensack police shooting of Raymond Peralta-Lantigua.

“At this time our office is not in a position to make a determination of whether or not to present the case to the [g]rand [j]ury and will make that determination in the near future,” the prosecutor said this morning.

Lyndhurst police followed a blood trail to nearly 20 vehicles who they said were burglarized by a borough man with a recorded history of disorderly conduct who they said cut himself breaking into a local home.

A Summit Avenue resident called police at 3:20 a.m. Monday after finding Mario Moriano, 43, in his car, Capt. John Valente told Daily Voice.

He called out to a bloodied Moriano, who told him he’d been beaten and then quickly walked away, he said.

Responding officers found Moriano near the corner of New York Avenue with a severe cut on one of his fingers and took him into custody, Valente said.

They later walked the neighborhood — along Summit, New York and Pennsylvania avenues and Mountain Way — and found several blood-stained vehicles, he said. READ MORE….

MUGSHOT: Courtesy LYNDHURST PD

A Lyndhurst Police No-Shave November campaign brought in more than $2,200.

Participants included Detectives Ron Guirland, Mike Lemanowicz and Vin Auteri, Lt. John Kerner, Sgts. Rich Jarvis and John Mazzure, and Officers Chris Cuneo, Geoffrey Rejent, Michael Giangeruso, Charles Giangeruso, John Decamp, James Goral, Paul Haggerty and Rob Fernandez.

PHOTO: Courtesy LYNDHURST PD

TOP: Mazen Binsaadallah, Abdoul Kane
ABOVE: Serigne Pene, Abdulhakem Alghanmi, Abdullah Alqurashi
COURTESY: Lyndhurst PD

Lyndhurst police arrested the same two men on drug charges exactly a week apart, landing them in jail the second time.

Officers responding to a call of a suspicious vehicle with three occupants on Riverside Avenue just after 11:30 p.m. Dec. 30 smelled pot coming from it, Capt. John Valente told Daily Voice.

A search turned up a small bag of marijuana on the floor next to the passenger seat, he said, adding: “All three denied ownership.”

Released on drug-possession court summonses were Mazen Binsaadallah, 20 and Abdulhakem Alghanmi, 22, both of Lyndhurst, and 23-year-old Abdoul Kane of Harlem.

Wednesday night, police stopped a car on Riverside Avenue because it had a headlight out and no inspection sticker, Valente said. READ MORE….