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What began as second-degree robbery charges were downgraded to disorderly assault offenses against Adam Krilla, 20, and 19-year-old Daniel F. Mapes as a result of their separate pleas.
Krilla admitted that he was the one who assaulted the victim after he, Mapes and an underage accomplice set up the meeting at a Route 17 diner.
Daniel F. Mapes, Adam Krilla (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
The target had walked away after they showed him a product that he believed fake, but the trio followed him. He declined medical attention after the subsequent assault, authorities said at the time.
Responding Officer David Vega spotted three suspects running down West Ramapo Avenue a short time later. He got out of his vehicle, ordered them to stop, then took them into custody with support from backup officers.
The teen’s cash was recovered — and the substance wasn’t cocaine, authorities said.
Defense attorney Adam Lustberg called Krilla’s actions a monumental lapse of judgment, for which he said an agreed-upon year’s probation is fair.
Krilla works as a lifeguard at the NY Sports Club in Mahwah and hopes to both return to Hawaii, where he has a young son, and become a U.S. Marine.
“You’re starting off on the wrong foot,” Superior Court Judge James J. Guida told Krilla.
Mapes’ lawyer, Raymond Flood, took a different approach.
Flood said local police make “moving targets” of young men such as his client, “particularly in northern Bergen County, who don’t have the money to go away to college.”
He said he considers it significant that Mapes hasn’t been in trouble again in nearly a year and characterized the incident as “an extremely bad prank gone wrong.”
“There’s no need to have any probation whatsoever,” Flood said, adding that Mapes “was barely an adult when it happened.”
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Edward Burke called the pleas “a very good deal based on the nature of the indictment.”
The pair originally applied for pre-trial intervention but withdrew their applications and took the plea deal.
Besides probation and fines, Guida ordered that neither even contact the victim again, “not even by social media.”
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
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