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Derrick Williams, 50, was being held on $170,000 combined bail in the Bergen County Jail. He was also wanted on a warrant out of Highland Park.
Williams is charged with various counts of burglary, theft and credit card theft out of Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, Hackensack University Medical Center and Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck.
“Often when we experience these types of thefts from our hospital, our detectives network with Teaneck and Hackensack, and, more times than not, we discover similar incidents in the same time periods,” Englewood Detective Capt. Timothy Torell told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
“We all knew we had the same suspect thanks to the images captured on various video surveillance systems,” Torell said. “The apprehension in Teaneck was the break we needed.”
Surveillance footage showed Williams in Holy Name at the time of thefts on Oct. 3 — in which an employee’s credit card was stolen — and again yesterday, when security officers tried to stop him as he walked out the door, Acting Teaneck Police Chief Robert Carney said.
Carney said Williams then ran across Teaneck Road to the municipal building — which made it easy for police, whose headquarters are located there.
They found him hiding in a bathroom, “carrying five credit cards that he had just stolen from an employee break room inside the hospital,” the chief said.
Hackensack investigators had identified Williams from surveillance video from stores where he’d made small purchases using stolen credit cards, Detective Capt. Thomas Salcedo told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.
Williams in September entered a break room at HUMC, took pocketbooks, credit cards and cash and “threw everything else out,” he said.
He did the same at a break room in a Polifly Road office building, the captain said.
Torell, of Englewood, also confirmed charges against Williams for two alleged thefts at EHMC.
The first was on Sept. 26, when a 30-year-old hospital employee’s purse — with various credit cards and forms of ID — was snatched while she was away from her desk, he said.
A 41-year-old hospital worker had her wallet stolen under similar circumstances, Torell said.
“In both incidents, neither victim reported any unauthorized credit card use,” he said.
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