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Officers responding to a May 13 of a man shouting from an abandoned house on Elm Avenue and Hillcrest Street Street found a bleeding Justin Almanzar of Bogota, Police Chief John Burke said.
Almanzar tried making it to a friend’s house before collapsing just across the border in Teaneck, he said.
Almanzar, of Bogota, told officers that he was walking on Linden Avenue when someone following him called out his name and then stabbed him in the abdomen before taking an undetermined amount of cash.
He was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center.
Detective Sgt. Jonathan Misskerg and Detective Victor Negron investigated and found that the stabbing happened as part of a robbery gone bad at the intersection of Linden Avenue and West Grove Street, Burke said.
Almanzar, 21-year-old Jordan Santana of Teaneck and Amanda Occhipinti, 18, of Little Ferry “were looking for drug dealers to target for street robberies in order to obtain money and drugs,” the chief said.
Almanzar asked a 16-year-old dealer to deliver marijuana to him, Burke said — and when he did, Almanzar and Santana tried to rob him.
The two men took off, hiding behind parked vehicles to duck police, the chief said. Almanzar collapsed two blocks away, he said.
Both men and Occhipinti are charged with conspiracy to commit robbery and theft.
All three were being held on $50,000 bail each in the Bergen County Jail.
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