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Anthony Aguilar, 24, of Garfield and Elijah Battle, 25, of Paterson were wearing masks when they accosted the driver and took his Audi in the parking lot of the D-Mart Indian-Asian Farmers Market on Rochelle Avenue around 8 p.m. June 16, they said Friday.
The robbers abandoned the vehicle a couple of blocks away and fled in a red Toyota Rav 4 that had been reported stolen out of Paterson, investigators said.
The victim sustained minor injuries.
Meanwhile, Rochelle Park detectives and their colleagues from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office worked to identify his assailants, who later broke into a vehicle in Maywood, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said Friday.
Aguilar had been released from state prison in March after serving three years of a five-year sentence for a shooting during a fight at the Ninth Street Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Station in Hoboken in May 2018, records show.
He was back behind bars a short time later – this time in the Bergen County Jail -- for violating parole following an arrest last month for harassment and making terroristic threats in Palisades Park.
Battle, meanwhile, was released from state prison this past April after serving nearly five years of a seven-year sentence for a home invasion robbery in Passaic in January 2017.
He was seized Thursday and sent to the Bergen County Jail, where detectives later that day served Aguilar with complaints.
Both men are charged with first-degree carjacking, burglary, theft, receiving stolen property and weapons offenses, including possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.
Musella cited the work of his Special Investigations Squad and assistance from Rochelle Park and Maywood police, Paramus and Paterson police, the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office and the New Jersey State Parole Board.
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