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The robbers were armed with a knife and brass knuckles when they attacked the victim at the Knights Inn motel on Sunday, Capt. Robert Kaiser said.
One of two male assailants wore a ski mask to conceal his identity while a woman “held a knife at the door” to keep the victim from fleeing, the captain said.
The victim – who Kaiser said advertised an iPhone 10 for sale for $1,000 – was hospitalized with severe injuries
Detectives James Donatello and Brian Kropp worked the case, quickly identifying and arresting Marvin Arroyo, 20, and Joshua Vasques, 22, both of Paterson, and Kaylie Ehlers, 19, of Wayne, he said.
Relatives of Vasques said the story isn't true.
"The guy that was beat up was actually holding the girl at the hotel against her will," said his mother, Monique Vasques. "He went there to go and rescue his girlfriend."
"She could’ve got killed in there," his brother, PJ Vasques, added. "My brother saved her."
The victim's sister, Ariel Rutzler, told a different story: She said Ehlers had been staying with Damien Jordan Barron him at the hotel while texting Vasques, "planning this whole thing."
"She pretended to want to get back with my brother and then finally when the day came she sat by the edge of the bed near the hotel door waiting to let them in," Rutzler said. "They came into his room and stormed him. He had no time to react.
"She held the knife so he couldn't leave the room, telling the two men she was with to find his phone so he doesn't call police," the victim's sister said. "After they were done beating him when he asked her why they did this, she said 'revenge'."
The trio left after taking his phone, Rutzler said.
"He then ran out of the room stumbling to other hotel doors banging for help so he could use a phone to call me because the hotel room phone was broken and didn’t work," she said. "I rushed to the hotel. It was a bloodbath. The chairs were knocked over and my brother was bleeding a lot, trying to stay awake."
“This is what they did to me,” Barron himself wrote in a public Facebook post with photos.
“The first blow to my face, a pair of brass knuckles broke against my head, leaving me with no teeth and delirium while trying to defend myself,” Barron wrote. “I couldn’t call the cops. I couldn’t breathe. [M]y vision was blurry.”
Barron continued, in part:
“It took me a hour to decide if going to the cops or hospital was the right thing or even trying to go outside was the right thing. I was afraid they were still there.
“I had no idea I was gonna live. [I’m] terrified to look in the mirror because…I have no front teeth….I’m ashamed to even look at anybody. I cover my mouth when I smile. I’m broken from this.
“They almost left my two kids without a father they almost left a mother without a son."
Records show the 6-foot-9-inch, 250-pound Barron has been arrested several times in the past few years in East Rutherford, New Milford, Paramus, Wallington, Wayne and Warren County. The charges include shoplifting, pot possession and obstruction.
“What they did you shouldn’t do to anybody, [whether] it’s revenge out of spite or even just for a phone,” he wrote. “[A]person is a person. [I]f you don’t like that person, don’t go near them.”
A judge ordered all three defendants held in the Bergen County Jail on charges of first-degree armed robbery, as well as aggravated assault, burglary and weapons possession. They remained there as of Friday morning, records show.
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ALSO SEE: A Las Vegas driver stopped by South Hackensack police on Route 46 before dawn Wednesday was carrying a handgun and hollow-point bullets, authorities said.
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