Tear Gas Ends Hours-Long SWAT Standoff With Knife-Wielding Man At River Edge Garden Apartment

SWAT team members ended a standoff of more than five hours when they subdued a knife-wielding man who’d barricaded himself in his mother’s River Edge apartment.

Bergen County Regional SWAT Team at the Oxford Terrace Apartments in River Edge on Tuesday, Feb. 21.
Photo Credit: *COURTESY: Oradell Police Department*

Jerry DeMarco

02/21/2023 1:51 p.m.

A construction worker by trade, the man had been living in shelters in New York City before recently moving in with his mother at the Oxford Terrace Apartments.

He'd become violent, however, so she fled and called police at 7:43 a.m., River Edge Police Chief Michael Walker said.

Responding officers “tried to contend with him,” but he retreated into the kitchen of the garden apartment and began picking up knives, the chief said.

Then he grabbed a box cutter, Walker said.

The officers wisely backed out and called a “rolling” Bergen County Regional SWAT Team unit, he said.

The larger unit arrived soon after and the standoff continued for several hours, the chief said.

Finally, the team began lobbing gas canisters through the windows.

They got the heavily barricaded door open and seized the man without further incident around 1 p.m., Walker said.

He was taken to Bergen New Bridge Medical Center in Paramus for a psychological evaluation.

“No one got hurt. That’s what matters,” the chief said, praising the work of his officers and the SWAT team.

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