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Elvin Jesus Diaz, 24, was pronounced dead at Hackensack University Medical Center just before 3 p.m., roughly 90 minutes after authorities said he charged officers who’d gone to his parents’ Temple Avenue home on a probation check.
“This was a scenario in which he forced the officers’ hands,” City Police Director Michael Mordaga told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “It wasn’t a scenario where the officers had any kind of discretion.
Elvin Diaz
PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Chris Denton
MUGSHOT: Coutesy BCSO
“He outright charged at them.”
Sgt. Miguel Molina, a 15-year department veteran, and Officer Elvin Hernandez, who joined two years ago, “fired their weapons, striking him several times,” Mordaga said.
Backup officers rushed to the scene — among them, Diaz’s cousin, the director said.
“All of the officers are extremely distraught,” Mordaga said this afternoon.
Molina and Hernandez were brought to HUMC to be evaluated and treated for shock, he said.
“We feel for the family,” Mordaga said. “But there was absolutely 100% no other alternative.”
A records check by CLIFFVIEW PILOT turned up several incidents involving Diaz the past five years:
After family members reported him missing in late July 2010, he set fire to his car on Johnson Avenue and was rushed to the hospital after city firefighters pulled him out, Mordaga said. Police later charged him with arson.
Three months later, officers responded to his parents’ home because he was acting violently, the director said. They subdued Diaz and an ambulance took him to Bergen Regional Medical Center, he said.
In January 2012, family members again reported him missing.
Diaz was arrested on drug charges in May 2013 and again a month later on a drug-related warrant, criminal records show. He pleaded guilty and received probation.
Diaz was suspected in a burglary when officers approached him in December 2014 and he turned on them, sending one to the hospital, Mordaga said.
He was charged with assault on police, resisting arrest and obstruction, then posted $15,000 bail and was released three days later from the Bergen County Jail.
Two weeks after that, Diaz was issued a disorderly person’s summons for an unspecified incident, the director said.
CLIFFVIEW PILOT photo: John Cito
A family friend told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that he’d moved back to Hackensack after a brief stay in Florida last year and was living with his Dominican-born mother in the home at 10 Temple Avenue that his parents, Julian and Cecilia, bought near the corner of Main Street 15½ years ago.
Diaz had been diagnosed depressive and complained to friends that he’d had trouble finding work because of people’s reactions to his neck and facial tattoos, several of which he’d recently gotten.
Police again encountered him this afternoon after the Bergen County Probation Department sent them to his parents house after he’d failed to report to his probation officer, Mordaga said.
The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and Bergen County Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Identification was at the Temple Avenue scene just off Main Street.
TOP PHOTOS: Submitted by family friend
MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF
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