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Estiben Alegria-Hurtado, 42, of Elizabeth, was shot within a minute of the arrival of city police responding to a call of an "unwanted individual" on Amity Street shortly before 8 a.m. Saturday, July 29, a release from the office of New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin on Wednesday says.
Officers rendered aid to Hurtado, who was taken by an EMS unit to University Hospital in Newark, the release says.He was pronounced dead at 11:36 p.m. Sunday, July 30, it says.
Someone had called police after Alegria-Hurtado and his brother's ex-girlfriend got into a dispute, family members said.She was armed with a bat, they said, and he had a knife.
State law and his own guidelines require Platkin to review deaths that occur “during an encounter with a law enforcement officer acting in the officer’s official capacity or while the decedent is in custody," no matter what the circumstances are.
The guidelines guarantee that the investigation is done “in a full, impartial and transparent manner," removing politics or personal agendas, the attorney general has said.
Once the investigation by Platkin’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) is completed, the results are presented to the grand jury “in a neutral, objective manner, and with appropriate transparency,” he said.
The panel then renders a ruling on whether the incident was handled according to the attorney general's guidelines.
“An officer may use deadly force in New Jersey when the officer reasonably believes it is immediately necessary to protect the officer or another person from imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm,” Platkin has said.
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