45°
Lodi police with help from their Hackensack colleagues arrested Tyron Frost and Brian Rochester a little over two weeks after the Aug. 18 holdup in Memorial Park. The pair had a gun when they approached the teen and took his cellphone, a $150 watch and $10 in cash, police alleged at the time.
A month later, Frost and Rochester enlisted two other men — identified as Samuel Vazquez and Sean Johnson — to “commit witness tampering by using force or a threat of force that a reasonable person believed would cause a witness or information to withhold information,” an indictment returned by a grand jury in Hackensack says.
Johnson, “believing an investigation was pending, used force or threat of force to cause a witness to withhold information” and “terrorized him in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror,” the indictment says.
Over the course of three days in September, it adds, Johnson and Vazquez “engaged in a course of conduct to cause [the victim] to fear for his safety or another’s.”
The indictment charges Frost and Rochester with first-degree robbery with a deadly weapon and two second-degree illegal handgun possession counts.
It also charges Frost with one count of witness tampering, Johnson with two counts of witness intimidation and Johnson and Vasquez with witness intimidation.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy LODI PD
Click here to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates.
