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A South Hackensack police officer pulled over 53-year-old Daniel Vergara after he drove from the Airport Motel last night and found the boy “acting very scared,” Capt. Robert Kaiser told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Vergara — who works as a code enforcer for the city of Paterson’s Department of Public Works — told the officer that he’d come from someplace else, he said.
He also told the boy’s parents that he’d taken the youngster on a camping trip, the captain said.
Vergara, who once led the Puerto Rican Day parade in Paterson as its president, created Boy Scout Troop 911 after the attacks on America in September 2001. The group became know for wearing Army-style camouflage fatigues instead of the traditional blues.
Vergara’s record includes a 2013 arrest on charges of taking electronics, jewelry and other valuables from someone’s home while on the job.
South Hackensack police notified members of the prosecutor’s Special Victims Unit, who interviewed the boy, after they stopped Vergara, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said this afternoon. The youngster “provided specific details regarding his relationship with [him],” he said.
The boy wasn’t believed to have been sexually abused, authorities said.
Vergara was being held on $75,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR
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