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Matthew Trontz, a 31-year-old ex-con from Jersey City, was arrested almost immediately after he held up Thomas’ Ice Cream Café on Jefferson Street between 2nd and 3rd Streets on Tuesday, Feb. 27, city police said.
He was carrying a black stun gun, a silver imitation toy gun, a pocket knife and three cans of pepper spray, they said.
Trontz brandished the firearms at Thomas’s, at Prime Gourmet on Monroe Street (Jan. 15), at Prime Stop on Willow Street and Hoboken Mini Mart on Washington Street (Feb. 12) and at A&H Smoke Shop, also on Washington Street (Feb. 20), police said.
Trontz, formerly of Edgewater, has at least one prior conviction for armed robbery, records show.
Hoboken police seized him in Jersey City and charged him with multiple counts that include first-degree robbery and a host of weapons offenses that include illegally possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.
He remained held in the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny, records show.
Cited for their work on the case were Detectives Ryan Houghton, Tyler Soto and Michael Losurdo.
Also contributing, police officials said, were Sgts William Collins, Luke Zeszotarski, Dennis Figueroa and Francis McCourt, Detectives Christine Collins Andrew Perez, Bret Globke, Samuel Flores, Luis Rodriguez, Connor Milne and Fabian Quinones, and Police Officers Daniela Simone, Paul Quinn, Ricky Truppner, Harold Milne, Nick Valerius, Harry Montalvo, Enrico Gnassi, Jonathan Figueroa, Shelby Seickendick, Aaron Font, Chelsea Tambora, Mathew Bonanno, Mark Mooreman, Shawn Sodora, Alexander Miller, Shyenna Vega and Nasir Willey.
Also thanked were the Hoboken Volunteer Ambulance Corps and both the New Jersey Transit and Jersey City police departments “for aid and assistance during the investigations and arrest.”
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