Two Midnight Assaults in Maplewood Are Related, Say Police

Two late-night assault incidents in Maplewood last week appear to be related.

At 12:20 a.m. on August 10, a 45-year-old Maplewood man said he was approached by a group of about three to four young adult males as he was walking on Berkeley Street. The group came up from behind the man and began to punch him and knocked him to the ground.

During the struggle, one of the attackers took the man’s cell phone and the group fled on foot down Berkeley Street towards Stuyvesant Avenue. While the men were running away, one of them ran up to another man who witnessed the attack and struck him in the face with his fist.

The robbery victim sustained cuts and abrasions to his face, knees and elbows, according to Maplewood police. The assault victim, also a Maplewood resident, was not inured in the incident. The group was last seen getting into a white, four-door Pontiac and a silver or gray four-door car. They are described as black males in their late teens or early twenties and one was wearing a Yankees baseball cap.

Shortly after the initial report of the robbery on Berkeley Street, two other young men reported to police that they too were approached by a group while they were walking on Brown Street near Henry Place.

The two victims in this incident reported to Maplewood police that a group of about five or six young black men exited from two cars and approached them in an aggressive manner. Seeing this, the two young men began to run and were chased briefly by the group but were able to escape from any harm. The victims also reported seeing the group exit from a white four-door Pontiac Grand Prix and a silver or gray four-door car, possibly an Acura. 

The victims in this incident were not injured.

Maplewood Police Captain Paul Conlon said that, "Based on the similar description of the actors and the cars and also the close time frame we believe that the two incidents were committed by the same group."