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The bicycle was seen on its side on the road's shoulder behind the unmarked black Ford Explorer that hit it on Willow Grove Street (Route 604) outside the Hackettstown Senior Housing Development off Brook Hollow Drive an hour before sunrise on Monday, Feb. 5.
The adult cyclist was rushed up the street to Hackettstown Medical Center shortly after 6 a.m., New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said.
He was pronounced dead at 7:17 a.m., the attorney general said.
Platkin, who temporarily withheld the cyclist's name, is bound by state law and his office's own guidelines to review deaths that occur during any encounter with a law enforcement officer in New Jersey.
This is done no matter the circumstances.
It guarantees that the investigation is done “in a full, impartial and transparent manner," removing politics or personal agendas, Platkin has said.
Once the investigation by the attorney general's Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) team is completed, the results will be presented to a grand jury “in a neutral, objective manner, and with appropriate transparency,” he said.
The panel will then render a ruling on whether or not there is cause to suspect criminality.
Someone in the early weeks of the process, police body camera footage and images captured by area security cameras are shared with the person's family and then publicly released.
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