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Isiah Freeman (above, left) and Jory Powell, both 26 and from the Bronx, broke into the house last Aug. 8 and assaulted a woman, now 64, after pretending to be PSE&G workers checking a gas leak, authorities said at the time.
Although she declined medical attention at first, the woman went to an area hospital with pain in her shoulder, Englewood Cliffs Police Chief Michael Cioffi told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Accomplices who they said were with Powell and Freeman were either never found or charged.
The robbers took off in two vehicles — one a white Infiniti and the other a rented black Dodge sedan — as police pulled into the dead-end street after being summoned by a neighbor. Officers chased the sedan on side streets into Fort Lee and then onto Route 4 as the Infiniti disappeared.
“At one point, it hit a car on a Fort Lee street, then ran off the road and onto a lawn,” Cioffi said at the time. “It just missed hitting a wall.”
The pursuit continued onto the highway, where the getaway driver tried to pull off at the South Van Brunt Street entrance to the 4 West Diner. But the vehicle hit a curb and blew two tires, the chief said.
All three occupants then bailed out.
An Englewood police officer caught one trying to hide in a nearby factory after seeing him go in, the source said. The second was grabbed by Englewood Cliffs Sgt. James Tracy near the Gym at The Brownstones nearby.
The third man apparently kept running through the fitness center lot.
Police credited several patrons and workers at the diner who pointed out where the bandits were headed.
“It was really the equivalent of, ‘They went that way’,” one officer told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Dozens of officers from Englewood Cliffs, Englewood, Leonia and Fort Lee converged on the scene to assist in the manhunt. The Van Brunt Street exit off Route 4 was closed.
Powell and Freeman remained held on $750,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail today.
The 11-count indictment returned last week charges them with breaking into the home and threatening to hurt the woman after pointing a .38-caliber handgun at them.
It also charges them with preventing or attempting to prevent Tracy from an arrest through the use of force — thus creating “a substantial risk of physical injury” — and trying to hurt th eelderly woman.
Freeman, an ex-convict, also was charged with illegally possessing a gun.
MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF
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