BY WALTER ELLIOTT
NEWARK – There is more than just the holiday season in one Newark neighborhood for noticing increased police patrols.
The Newark Police Division Traffic Unit has stepped up patrolling the area in and around the North Ward’s Lower Broadway section in the wake of an 11-year-old boy being jumped by four youths here Nov. 15.
The middle school student was walking home that Wednesday afternoon in the 540 block of Summer Avenue when a pair of gray four-door late model SUVs stopped in the travel lane across from him.
In a surveillance video recording released by a neighbor, the first two or three and then four males in their late teens or early twenties got out of the first SUV and approached the boy.
They grabbed his cell phone, throwing him down onto the sidewalk, before getting back into the first car. The boy ran to get into the SUV to get the phone back – but the vehicle pulled away, sending the boy onto the street.
The boy, who suffered an injured knee, was taken in by another neighbor and called police. NPD recorded the following descriptions:
- One suspect was wearing a black jacket with beige sleeves.
- The second suspect was wearing a red skull cap, black pants, a gray sweater and white sneakers.
- The third was all black except for a gray facemask.
- The last wore black pants and white sneakers
The suspects and the two SUVs that Wednesday were last seen in the area of Orange and Norfolk streets in the North Ward’s Roseville section.
The police response continued Nov. 16 with Jimmy Stewart of the NPD Traffic Unit, North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos, Jr., and several New York City news reporters. Ramos and Stewart chipped in to replace the boy’s cell phone.
“We want him and his parents to know that they are not alone,” said Stewart.
The boy’s parents said that they will not let him walk home from school anymore.
