3 Suspects Sought In Violent Maplewood Carjacking: Police

MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Police are looking for three suspects in a violent carjacking early Saturday morning in Maplewood.

Police said that on Saturday, April 22 around 5:03 a.m., the Maplewood Police Department received a 911 call of a vehicle that had crashed into the steps of 128 Boyden Ave.

While police were responding to that scene, they were flagged down by a 37-year-old woman who reported that she had just been a victim of an attempted strong-arm carjacking.

The woman said she was sitting in her BMW in the parking lot of 200 Boyden Ave. (the Avalon) with a male friend, when a person in a "partial facemask" approached the car, she told them.

The man supposedly told her that she had something "hanging from her trunk."

When she got out, he pushed her to the ground and jumped into the driver's seat, police said.

She described the person as a Black male who was in his 20s, wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt and a black partial facemask.

Then, two other people wearing gray, with black partial face masks, in their 20s, approached the passenger's side. They "opened the door and removed the male passenger from the vehicle, threw him to the ground and assaulted him," police said.

The woman still had the key fob, so the man in the driver's seat was unable to flee, police said.

The three men "returned to their vehicle and fled the scene northbound on Boyden Avenue in a white Kia that was later determined to be a stolen vehicle out of Bloomfield, NJ. The stolen vehicle was the crash that initiated the original 911 call."

After the men crashed the car, they fled on foot toward Irvington, police said.

The victims "sustained superficial injuries and refused medical attention," police said.

Anyone with information or video of the suspects should contact Detective Zuhowski at
973-761-7929 or email JZUHOWSKI@MAPLEWOODNJ.GOV, police said.