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Vincent Correa, 44, of Hamilton fired a rifle at Officers Derek Fiabane and Paul Piromalli as they responded to a 911 domestic call on Orchard Avenue shortly after 10 p.m. March 8, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said.
"The officers returned fire, fatally wounding Correa," the attorney general said on March 20.
The father of two -- who Platkin said was also carrying a handgun -- was pronounced dead at the scene at 10:38 p.m.
Fiabane was hospitalized with non-fatal gunshot wounds before being released a week later.
New Jersey law requires grand jury reviews of any and all civilian deaths that occur in encounters with police, no matter how obvious the circumstances are.
The guidelines guarantee that the investigation is done “in a full, impartial and transparent manner," removing politics or personal agendas.
Part of the process involves releasing all 911 audio, police bodycam footage and video shot from surveillance cameras and/or cellphones to the family of the deceased -- and then the public -- as an investigation by Platkin’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) continues.
That was expected to be done soon.
Once the OPIA probe is completed, the results will be presented to the grand jury to formally determine whether or not it was a clean shoot.
Evidence presented to the grand jurors in these cases ordinarily includes police body cam video of the incident, home surveillance footage, witness interviews, photographs, ballistics results, and autopsy findings from the medical examiner.
Platkin noted that a law enforcement officer "may use deadly force in New Jersey when the officer reasonably believes it is immediately necessary to protect the officer or another person from imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm."
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