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David Allen Hagal, 60, was charged with murder and illegal weapons possession in the brutal murder of his 87-year-old father.
Borough police rushed to the home, found the body of George J. Hagal and took David Allen Hagal, 60, into custody shortly after 7:30 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 10.
The younger Hagal hit his father in the head with a metal pipe and stabbed him multiple times, then shoved his head in a bucket of water, a police complaint says.
"Exhibiting suicidal behavior," he went to police headquarters and confessed, it says.
Police then discovered the body of George Hagal, a former Teaneck police officer.
They found the bloodied pipe and knife in a second-floor bathroom, Franklin Lakes Patrolman David Blum wrote in the complaint filed in Superior Court in Hackensack.
Exactly which part of the brutal assault specifically took the elder Hagal's life is being determined by an autopsy conducted by the Bergen County Medical Examiner's Office.
A motive hasn't yet been publicly discussed.
David Hagal remained held in the Bergen County Jail pending a first appearance in Central Judicial Processing Court in Hackensack. He's charged with murder and illegal possession of the pipe and the knife.
A grandfather of six, George Hagal lost his wife of 63 years just this past April.
Teaneck natives Elaine Pommerencke and George Hagal were both graduated from the township high school. They were married in 1958, lived in town for 20 years and had three children.
George Hagal served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps after graduating. He was a Teaneck police officer for 12 years before handing in his gun and badge to become vice president of Carl Mellone & Son, a wholesale food dealer in town (now Mellone Wholesale Produce of Hackensack).
Hagal was a former president of PBA Local 86, which represented officers in Teaneck, Englewood, Leonia, Ridgefield Park and Bogota. He was active in the Teaneck Boy Scouts and Little League.
The Hagals moved into their brand-new four-bedroom, four-bath home on Haddon Place in Franklin Lakes -- a cul-de-sac between Franklin Avenue and Route 208 -- in 1978.
The Bergen County Prosecutor's Major Crimes Unit is heading the patricide investigation with assistance from borough police, the Medical Examiner's Office and the Bergen County Sheriff's Bureau of Criminal Identification, which collected evidence.
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