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Wood-Ridge Sgt. Robert Stasion and Officer Robert Jones were checking on school properties in the borough when they spotted 19-year-old Marcus Cooks in a stairwell of the Catherine E. Doyle School at Wood-Ridge Ave and 12th St. at 4:40 a.m., Police Chief Joseph Rutigliano told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Almost instantly, the police communications room received a report of an alarm the school’s alarm company, the chief said.
Althouh Cooks bolted when he saw the officers, Jones and Stasion had help up ahead in Wallington, where police picked up the chase along the railroad tracks toward the Wood-Ridge/South Hackensack/Wallington border, Rutigliano said.
N.J. Jersey Transit Police saw Cooks run into the Curtiss Wright Industrial Complex in Wood-Ridge and Bergen County Police spotted him climbing onto the roof of a furniture warehouse shortly before 6:30 a.m., he said.
“He had the grace of a gazelle as he was able to climb 10-foot-high fences, jump down high walls and scale the side of a building in no time,” the chief told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
When he refused to come down from the warehouse roof, police went up and got him, Rutigliano said.
Cooks, of North Plainfield, was charged with several offenses after police found stolen items in his backpack, the chief said.
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