Crime & Safety

3 Woodbridge Police Officers Indicted for Covering up Car Crash: Prosecutor

Officers David Hughes and Amanda Felicies lied to protect Officer Brian Joseph after he got into a car accident, a grand jury determined.

Woodbridge, NJ - Three Woodbridge police officers were indicted Friday on charges they tried to cover-up a car accident that one of them had caused on Rt. 9 north last May.

Brian Joseph, 33, of Perth Amboy, David Hughes, 31, of the Port Reading section of Woodbridge, and Amanda Felicies, 30, of the Fords section of Woodbridge, were charged in the six-count indictment with two counts of official misconduct and a related count of conspiracy for failing to file a report and changing computer records that had documented the crash.

In addition, Officer Hughes was charged with falsifying public records and tampering with public records to conceal the crash, while Officer Felicies was charged with false swearing by lying under oath to police during an investigation into the cover-up.

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The indictment was handed down by a Middlesex County grand jury in New Brunswick, Prosecutor Andrew Carey said, following a lengthy investigation by both the county and the Woodbridge police department into the crash last May.

After investigating, the Woodbridge Police Department determined that Hughes and Felicies were dispatched to the motor vehicle crash in the township on May 23, 2015.

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Officer Joseph, who was off-duty at the time, was traveling north on Rt. 9 and was exiting onto West Pond Road when his Mitsubishi sport utility vehicle jumped the curb, was damaged and could not be driven.

The investigation determined that Officer Hughes filed a false report on May 23 to protect Joseph. Officer Felicies subsequently provided false information under oath on January 19, 2016, the grand jury charged.

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