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Diaz was struck on Willow Grove Street (Route 604) outside the Hackettstown Senior Housing Development off Brook Hollow Drive in Warren County an hour before sunrise on Monday, Feb. 5.
NJSP Sgt. First Class Kesene Grier was driving the unmarked black Ford Explorer that hit him shortly after 6 a.m., New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said.
Diaz was rushed up the street to Hackettstown Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 7:17 a.m., the attorney general said.Grier, meanwhile, sounded severely traumatized by the accident, those listening to their police radios said.
State law and his office's own guidelines require Platkin 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 probe 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.
Grier, who was born in Jamaica and raised in New Jersey, earned a Bachelor’s and Master's degree in social work from Kean and Fordham universities, respectively, according to her online bio.She was a social worker for several years assisting under-served populations, including seniors and at-risk youths, then joined the New Jersey State Police in September of 2004, it says.
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