Officers patrolling the area of Tice’s Corner Marketplace spotted a van with no license plates and a temporary tag just after 9 o’clock Friday night, Woodcliff Lake Police Chief Anthony Jannicelli told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
A man was “going in and out of the van,” raising suspicions, the chief said.
So officers stopped the vehicle .
As they were talking to one of the occupants, a call came in that a man with a gun was trying to rob the A&P directly across the street, Jannicelli said.
“It was a diversionary call,” the chief said.
The van then took off, with Detective Steve Regula in pursuit, Jannicelli said.
The vehicle then crashed and both men bailed out, he said.
Bergen County Police Officer Chris Ham and his tracking dog, Ayko, caught one of the men soon after in front of 1 Deerfield Road, behind Woodcliff Lake Road near the Garden State Parkway in Woodcliff Lake.
He was identified as Camilo Alexandro Pabon, 18, of Guttenberg.
The other found a good Samaritan willing not only to give him a lift but to pay for his ticket, as well.
“We stopped the train in Westwood, but he wasn’t on it,” Jannicelli told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “We don’t know whether he had someone waiting, if he caught a ride somewhere or what he did.”
What police found odd was that the fleeing burglar has an eyeball tattoo on his neck and tattoos along both arms.
“You shouldn’t stop for anyone,” one officer told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “But a guy who looks like this, out on the road by himself?”
Pabon is being held on $15,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with receiving stolen property (the car), resisting arrest, eluding police and causing false public alarm (the holdup call).
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