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Lt. William Duby Jr. was driving past on Main Street when he reported seeing a woman walking hurriedly Saturday night near Boulevard while “looking behind her twice as if she was trying to get away from someone or something.”
Behind her was 35-year-old former bodybuilder Andrew Kleber.
“It appeared he was talking or trying to talk to her and she was ignoring him,” the lieutenant reported.
The woman began walking faster, with Kleber following her into a 7-Eleven, he said.
Moments later, she emerged, waving her hand and shaking her head as Kleber followed, police said. Seeing Duby, Kleber ran back into the store, they said.
He quickly re-emerged, shouting and cursing “with both fists clenched as if he was going to strike her,” the lieutenant reported.
Duby got out of his car and shouted at Kleber, who walked away.
After radioing for backup, Duby three times ordered the intoxicated Kleber to stop, police said.
He grabbed his right wrist, but Kleber “snatched his arm away and made a backswing,” then struggled with Duby, kicking him, as the lieutenant tried to get him into handcuffs, they said.
Duby got control of Kleber with help from a passerby and then held onto him until backups arrived.
Officers put Kleber into two sets of cuffs — mindful that he’d slipped a single pair from behind his back under his legs during last week’s previous arrest.
Police said Kleber was still struggling as the officers dragged him to a cruiser, picked him up and put him in the back seat. He eventually passed out, they said.
Kleber came to and resumed struggling at headquarters, then refused to sit, laying on the floor, they said.
Kleber remained held in the Bergen County Jail today on $25,000 bail — the same amount that he posted after tussling with police who said they found him “intoxicating and stumbling” at his mother’s home five nights earlier.
“It is best if you handcuff me now for all of your safety,” Kleber told responding officers that night, Detective Lt. Brian Long told CLIFFVIEW PILOT last week.
He also told one of the officers to check his bag, Long said, and they found “a vast amount” of Ritalin and Carisoprodol pills without prescriptions inside.
Kleber then slipped his hands below his feet to the front of his body, got up from a kitchen chair and began swinging with closed fists at the officers, Long said.
The lieutenant said they pushed Kleber back into the chair, and he began kicking the officers, shouting: “F*ck you guys. You all think you are tough!”
Kleber was processed on three charges each of aggravated assault on police and possession of prescription drugs, as well as a single count of resisting arrest, before being taken to the jail that night. He posted bail two days later, records show.
This past Saturday’s arrest makes it three times that Kleber has been charged with assaulting borough police.
Six months after being hit by a hit-and-run driver, he left an officer with a sprained wrist and scraped knees in November 2013.
Police said Kleber that night approached a police vehicle in the parking lot of the Brookchester stores on River Road, banged on its window and shouted obscenities at the officer, then jumped him when he got out.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy NEW MILFORD PD
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