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“Somehow I get the feeling the victim and assailants’ paths didn’t quite cross each other coincidentally,” Police Chief Robert Kugler told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Saddle Brook police got the call at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and rushed to the parking lot of the Saddle Brook Marriott on Pehle Avene at the junction of the Garden State Parkway and Route 80.
There they found Ortiz, who said he pulled in with a friend, got out of his white 2007 Infiniti M35 and was approached by as many as six guys in masks carrying baseball bats and knives, Kugler said.
Ortiz “was struck with a blunt object in the head and upper torso and sustained a wound to his arm that required multiple stitches,” the chief said. “The passenger of the vehicle fled on foot.”
The group then took off in the Infiniti and another car, described as possibly a black Nissan Altima or Maxima.
After being treated for his injuries at Hackensack University Medical Center, Ortiz was turned over to North Bergen authorities, Kugler said.
“This doesn’t appear to be a random robbery… as we are told and are supposed to believe,” Kugler told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Ortiz has a history of jumping bail, as well as convictions for aggravated assault and drugs that put him in prison for little more than a year, records show.
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