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The total take: five grand.
Rahquan Brooks, 20, and Kevin Ulysses, 19, of the Bronx had two juveniles with them when they drove up to the Exxon station on eastbound Route 46 just before the Overpeck Creek bridge in Ridgefield Park shortly before 4:30 a.m. July 24, 2022, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said.
The silver sedan had been carjacked out of Brooklyn three days earlier, he said.
Wearing hoodies, sunglasses, masks and gloves, the robbers took $3,000 after forcing open the cash register while one of them brandished what Musella said “appeared to be a black colored firearm.”
Minutes later, he said, the same crew took $2,000 by force from the cash register at the 7-Eleven at the Sunoco station near the exit for Sixth Street in Palisades Park. It was barely five minutes past the first location and another five to the GWB up ahead.
No injuries were reported in either holdup.
Musella's detectives spent nearly 18 months assembling a case with help from police in Ridgefield Park and Palisades Park, the Bergen County Sheriff's Bureau of Criminal Identification -- which collected evidence -- and both the Nassau County (NY) Sheriff's Department and the NYPD.
Brooks was arrested this past August in connection with a pair of gas station robberies on Long Island.
He and two accomplices were scared off during one attempt, then beat and robbed an employee at another gas station moments later, fleeing the scene in a stolen 2006 Honda Civic, authorities on the island said at the time.
Brooks has been held since then in the Nassau County Jail, where Musella said detectives served him with a criminal complaint.
Ulysses was arrested on unrelated charges in New York City this past Jan. 4, the prosecutor said. He was extradited and brought to New Jersey on Jan. 17.
Bergen County Jail records show Ulysses was “released by the court” on Jan. 31. The reason why isn't exactly clear.
Both Brooks and Ulysses are charged with first-degree armed robbery, along with conspiracy, various weapons offenses and receiving stolen property.
Delinquency complaints charge both juveniles with the same offenses. Musella didn't say whether they were sent to a juvenile detention center or released to adults.
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