ONLY ON CVP: A 24-year-old Clifton man wanted by Fair Lawn police crashed a stolen car in Paramus, then chest-bumped an officer and spit in his face after he was caught trying to run away, authorities said.

Footprints in yesterday’s overnight snow — reported stolen out of Fair Lawn — led Officer Gil Maynard to Eddie R. Gonzalez on Paramus Road moments after he crashed the stolen 2002 Lincoln Continental just after midnight, Deputy Police Chief Robert Guidetti told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

“He denied being the car, but the officer found him trying to discard the keys in the snow,” Guidetti said.

He then became combative, the deputy chief said.

After taking him into custody, Paramus police turned Gonzalez over to their Fair Lawn colleagues.

Gonzalez was being held on $50,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with assault on police, aggravated assault with bodily fluids and resisting/eluding.

Ridgewood police arrested Gonzalez on DWI charges three months ago after they said they caught him speeding and not maintaining a lane.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Elmwood Park police yesterday seized 72 bags of heroin and a half-ounce of pot during a trio of traffic stops in less than seven hours.

Nicholas Persico Jr., 34, of Elmwood Park, was carrying 50 bags of heroin when officers stopped his car on River Drive near the Route 46 ramp at 2:18 p.m., Police Chief Michael Foligno said.

Ashley Rankin, 22, of Nanuet was carrying 12 bags of heroin when she was stopped three hours later on Locust Street, Foligno said.

Darrel Williams, 23, of Paterson, was carrying the marijuana when he was stopped on East 54th Street at 9:12 p.m., the chief said.

All were released on court summonses.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: An Englewood man crashed a stolen SUV into an NJ Transit bus in Fair Lawn this morning, sending the driver to the hospital with a back injury.

Gary Gamble, 29, was being held at Fair Lawn police headquarters late this morning pending transfer to the Bergen County Jail on $25,000 bail.

Gamble, who had an outstanding theft warrant out of Newark, took the 2001 Toyota Highlander from in front of a 4th Ward home on Layfayette Place in Englewood after the owner left it running while he went inside to get his children for school just before 7 a.m., Detective Capt. Timothy Torell told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

The owner “heard a loud crash outside and discovered that someone had stolen his vehicle and struck another vehicle in the driveway as he fled the scene,” Torell said.

Gamble later crashed the SUV into the bus, which was stopped with seven passenger aboard at Broadway and Hartley Place, Sgt. Brian Metzler told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

The 52-year-old female bus driver was taken to St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson, Metzler said, adding that no other injuries were reported.

Gamble was charged with receiving stolen property in Fair Lawn, where police also issued him summonses for reckless driving and failing to maintain a lane. Englewood police charged him with auto theft.

IMAGES: Courtesy ENGLEWOOD PD

PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT (top), Izzy Infield (above)

PHOTOS: An ambulance transporting a patient with its lights and siren on collided with two other vehicles and landed on its side in Dumont near the Cresskill border late this morning.

Six people were taken to area hospitals — two with serious injuries — following the collision involving the Guardian Ambulance at Knickerbocker and Grant avenues just before noon. A seventh person involved declined treatment.

PHOTO: Christopher Lubben

The patient that who was in the ambulance was tended to by EMTs for shortness of breath.

Several fire and EMS agencies responded, including Dumont volunteer ambulance, Creskill EMS and Englewood EMS.

Dumont police were investigating.

NOTE: A previous post incorrectly reported that seven people were hospitalized.

PHOTOS: Izzy Infield

CHECK BACK FOR MORE DETAILS

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Salvadoran national who lives in Ramsey slashed a cab driver’s hand and fled, stiffing him for $45 before dawn this morning, then was tracked to his home soon after by a Bergen County Sheriff’s K-9 unit, authorities said.

Jose Manuel Hernandez Ascencio, 18, slashed the driver at Erie Plaza at 12:10 a.m. with a red-handled knife after claiming that he didn’t have enough money to pay the fare, Police Chief Bryan Gurney told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

The Ramsey Ambulance Corps tended to the driver, who declined hospitalization, Gurney said.

The K-9 unit, meanwhile, led officers straight to a North Central Avenue address, where Ascencio answered the door, he said.

“Also in plain view was a red-handled knife,” the chief said.

The driver then identified Ascencio, who was taken into custody.

He was being held on $50,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with robbery, aggravated assault with a weapon and two weapons possession counts. An April 14 Municipal Court hearing was scheduled.

The INS also issued a detainer for deportation proceedings once the case is resolved.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy RAMSEY PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A judge in Hackensack today set a May 12 hearing for a challenge by the lawyer for a Wood-Ridge man charged in the bludgeoning and burning of a 70-year-old East Rutherford realtor against the DNA used to arrest him.

Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi granted the request by Richard Potter on behalf of his client, 39-year-old Daniel Rochat.

Potter is challenging the results of a “touch DNA” test, which uses less material than usual from a biological sample.

“Tthe DNA labs modify the accepted tests to deal with a sample in the billionths of a gram, as opposed to the normally accepted one – two nanograms of material,” Potter later told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Daniel Rochat (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)

Such tests based on that amount aren’t widely accepted in the scientific community, and there is no case law allowing it, he said.

As a result, a trial remained months off.

Rochat, a Waldwick native, is accused of breaking into 70-year old Barbara Vernieri’s Sheppard Terrace home on Sept. 14, 2012, bludgeoning her and then setting fire to the body in what prosecutors said was an attempt to avoid detection. He remained held on $3 million bail in the Bergen County Jail.

In addition to murder, a host of charges include endangering the upstairs tenant who called in the fire, as well as desecration of human remains, burglary and hindering prosecution.

The final count involves accusations that Rochat removed Vernieri’s cell phone and blood, DNA and other forensic evidence from the crime scene; gave false information to Wood-Ridge police; lied to them under oath, and threatened Wood-Ridge Sgt. Brian Griefer and Detective James McMorrow of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s office while resisting arrest.

Vernieri was a business associate of Rochat’s father, Gene, who was a principal at Kurgan-Bergen Realtors Agency. She had worked for the older Rochat for decades.

The murder bore similarities to two other unsolved Bergen County murders, both in 2010, in which elderly victims were doused with an accelerant and set ablaze.

Dolores Alliotts, 69, was stabbed to death and her Palisades Park home set on fire in April 2010. Five months later, 74-year-old Joan Davis of Teaneck suffered the same fate.

In each of those cases, as with Vernieri’s murder, prosecutors said the fires were set in an attempt to cover up the crimes.

The advantage in the Vernieri case was that East Rutherford police and firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, allowing a forensic examination of her body that authorities didn’t have in the two previous cases.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Danielle Grootenboer, defense attorney Richard Potter, Daniel Rochat in court today (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A 19-year-old Midland Park man originally accused of having sex with a 13-year-old girl has been charged with additional assaults involving two other girls before he turned 18, authorities said today.

James Stoldt was first arrested Feb. 24 after investigators interviewed a now-14-year-girl who said they had sex, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said at the time.

Authorities that day also charged his father, 57-year-old software engineer Richard Stoldt, with possession of child pornography and released him on a summons.

They also seized computers that Molinelli said contained images of the new victims.

The younger Stoldt posted $125,000 bail eight days after his arrest and was released from the Bergen County, then was re-arrested last Thursday with bail set at $250,000 this time, Molinelli said.

The charges include three counts of sexual assault stemming from relationship that the prosecutor said Stoldt had with two underage girls in 2011.

During an interview with one of them, the girl “provided specific details describing how [Stoldt] instructed her to send the explicit pictures and videos of herself to him via social media which he then stored on his computer,” the prosecutor said.

“Ongoing interviews…resulted in a third victim being identified,” Molinelli said. “During an interview of that victim, specific disclosures were made detailing several sexual assaults.”

Both Stoldt and the alleged victim were juvenile acquaintances at the time, he said.

The sex assault charges are filed as delinquency complaints because of Stoldt’s age at the time, Molinelli said.

Stoldt also is charged criminally with manufacturing images and videos depicting the sexual exploitation of children (child pornography) and child endangerment, he said.

The new charges followed an investigation by the prosecutor’s Special Victims Unit and Computer Crimes Unit, along with Midland Park police, Molinelli said.

ALSO SEE: Midland Park father, son charged with child porn possession after son is accused of having sex with girl, 13

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR

UPDATE: A 35-year-old Hawthorne woman was issued a summons for careless driving after she crashed her SUV into a utility pole in Glen Rock before dawn yesterday, police said today.

Lincoln Avenue was temporarily closed in both directions after the woman’s 2005 Ford Escape slammed into the pole at 3:23 a.m., Police Chief Fred Stahman told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this afternoon.

“She had serious but not life-threatening injuries,” the chief added.

EXCLUSIVE REPORT: A Jersey City man working as a security guard at a Rutherford hotel ingratiated himself with a group of teenage boys on a class trip with “macho stories” about exploits in the U.S. Marine Corps before sexually assaulting one of them, an assistant prosecutor told CLIFFVIEW PILOT today.

Jose M. Olivares, 26, remained in the upstate New York boys’ room after the three youngsters went to sleep, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Dion Findley said this afternoon.

A 16-year-old told investigators he later awoke to find Olivares sitting on his cot, giving him oral sex, according to an indictment returned last August.

The boy cried out, waking another of the students in the room, who is an important witness for the state, Findley said. The boy immediately reported the assault to a chaperone who called police, he said.

Defense attorney Suzanne Axel told Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi that she’ll be seeking school records from the Syracuse, NY high school attended by the boys, along with any possible juvenile delinquency records for the accuser.

Investigators said the assault occurred in the early morning hours of Sunday, Sept. 15, after the teens had spent the day in New York City.

Olivares worked for Calvary Protection Services of South Plainfield and was working at the hotel specifically as security for the students, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said at the time.

Unless both sides agree to a plea, DeAvila-Silebi said the trial could begin as early as June. Meanwhile, Olivares remained held on $100,000 bail.

STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor David Calviello, defense attorney Ron Bar-Nadav, Ramona P. Mercado-Vasquez, defense attorney Gayle Hargrove, Jorge Valencia (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: As the last of four defendants in the home invasion robbery and beating of developer Fred Daibes at his Edgewater high-rise was arraigned today, a judge in Hackensack said all of them should be prepared to discuss plea bargains.

Superior Court Judge Edward A. Jerejian set an April 27 court date for prosecutors and defense lawyers to report back to him on their progress.

The window for plea negotiations will close “as soon as everyone has had a chance to review all the evidence,” he added.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor David Calviello said he was still negotiating with the attorneys for all four.

Ramona P. Mercado-Vasquez (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)

“I am trying to resolve one or more of these cases in advance of trial,” he told Jerejian. “There’s a possibility of cooperating, and those who speak first often get the best result.”

As it stands, the charges are in “the higher first-degree range,” carrying prison terms of 15 to 30 years for a conviction on aggravated kidnapping alone.

Ramona P. Mercado-Vasquez was arraigned late this afternoon on charges of kidnapping Daibes and his doorman while using force, threatening to kill, and threatening bodily injury with a deadly weapon, among others contained in a 19-count indictment.

Appearing with her was co-defendant Jorge Valencia, the superintendent of Dabies’s St. Moritz building where the Nov. 26, 2013 robbery occurred.

Valencia was arraigned with the other two earlier this month, as was Mercado-Vasquez’s boyfriend, Adonis Sepulveda, who was brought before the judge this morning, as well.

Fred Daibes in court earlier this month (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)

Defendant Alexander Suarez wasn’t brought to court today because of what was described a calendar conflict for his lawyer.

All have pleaded not guilty.

The defense attorneys who were in court today complained of the difficulty in reviewing evidence at the Bergen County Jail, where they said library time is strictly limited and jail computers don’t open audio or video discs.

This angered the judge.

“I don’t understand your point. What do you want me to do about that?” Jerejian asked. “If the discs are in Spanish, get someone who speaks Spanish to help you.”

Jerejian said he wouldn’t agree to having all four defendants in the library at the same time for security reasons. However, he said he “can see the need for extended hours.”

Jerejian also denied a request by Mercado-Vasquez’s lawyer, Ron Bar-Nadav, to re-examine the crime scene, saying there was little point to trying to find DNA evidence after Daibes has continued living in the unit more than a year.

Mercado-Vasquez has insisted she was never in the apartment.

All four defendants remained held on $1 million bail each in the Bergen County Jail. Federal authorities also have slapped a detainer on Valencia.

Daibes was tied up with a bag over his head so he couldn’t see what they were doing, prosecutors said. His ribs were broken and $2 million in cash, gold and jewelry was taken during what became a nearly three-hour ordeal.

Adonis Sepulveda, Alexander Suarez, Jorge Valencia and their attorneys in court earlier this month (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)

At one point, the thieves lured the doorman upstairs during the robbery, then tied him up, as well, prosecutors said. Then they took the surveillance video from the doorman’s station, they said.

All of the stolen merchandise was found in the apartment at the St. Moritz building where Vasquez lived with Sepulveda, Calviello said earlier this year.

Authorities began searching for Valencia almost immediately after busting Mercado Vasquez and Sepulveda the day after the robbery. They later arrested Suarez, of the Bronx, on Dec. 11, 2013.

After learning of Valencia’s whereabouts, detectives from Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli’s office alerted the Boston Police Fugitive Unit and U.S. Marshal’s Office, who took him into custody in Massachusetts on Jan. 9 of last year.

A defense attorney last year claimed that Valencia fled to the Boston area after being threatened by Daibes’s family. Valencia was willing to work with police but didn’t trust that he’d be protected, she said.

* * * * * *

St. Moritz

THE INDICTMENT charges the quartet with:

• confining Daibes “for a substantial period to facilitate the commission of a crime or flight thereafter,” as well as inflicting “bodily injury to terrorize him,” before failing to release the well-known developer to a safe place;

• using force to injury Daibes and an employee of his, Marino Castillo, threatening to harm them while pointing a gun at them “under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life”;

• conspiring to commit kidnapping, armed robbery, or armed burglary;

• stealing $75,000 from him;

• hindering their apprehensions, prosecutions and convictions by concealing or destroying surveillance equipment, along with “data, clothing, burglary tools including booties, masks and gloves, and lying to law enforcement.

The indictment says the group “met, planned, discussed and agreed to participate in kidnapping, armed robbery or armed burglary.”

It also says that they allegedly “on more than one occasion attempted to carry out the offenses.”

The indictment says they “assisted one another in kidnapping both victims and taking property from Daibes’ apartment, and assisted each other in removing or concealing surveillance equipment and burglary implements from the crime scene.”

The crew entered Daibes’s’ apartment “armed with or displaying what appeared to be a handgun, and purposely inflicted bodily injury on [him],” it adds.

Sepulveda is charged separately with threatening to kill Daiies or putting him “in imminent fear of death.”

He and Mercado-Vasquez also face separate counts of handgun possession without a permit.

Suarez, meawhile, is charged separately wth hindering, by attempting “to remove proceeds from the burglary” that were in an apartment in the building shared by Mercado-Vasquez and Sepulveda and by lying to law enforcement.

He was also charged as convicted felon with illegal weapons possession, having previously been convicted of drug possession in a school zone.

Valencia is charged with eluding for fleeing to the Boston area as detectives closed in.

STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia

PHOTO: A Hackensack driver was hospitalized — and received a summons — after Wood-Ridge police said he pulled his car onto southbound Route 17 from the Fiesta last night and it was struck by another vehicle.

The victim was exiting the restaurant lot onto the ramp when the crash occurred just before 10:30 p.m., Police Chief Joseph Rutigliano told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

He received a summons for failing to yield, Rutigliano said.

The other driver was ticketed for not having insurance, the chief added.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A United Airlines employee from Ridgefield was caught snatching $576 from a passenger’s wallet in a screening tub at Newark Airport yesterday, Port Authority police said.

Surveillance video showed Joseph A. Bruno, 52, removing the cash after the 57-year-old West Caldwell victim put his wallet in the Terminal C tub around 5 a.m., the authority’s Joseph Pentangelo told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

The victim immediately reported the money missing, Pentangelo said.

Authority officers found Bruno a short distance away and arrested him.

The cash was returned to the victim, who then “resumed his travel plans,” Pentangelo said.

Bruno was charged with theft, he said.

MUGSHOT: Port Authority PD

EXCLUSIVE REPORT: A fugitive couple wanted in three states were living with their four children under assumed names in Palisades Park when borough police found them yesterday — thanks to a California rental car investigator.

Authorities in Florida, Georgia and Washington State helped confirm the identities of Cedric Frierson, 40, and Daeva Frierson, 47, who were being held on $10,000 bail each in the Bergen County Jail this morning.

Frierson told detectives that he’d been on the run from his father, a convicted bank robber captured by FBI agents outside a Lyndhurst hotel following a string of 1996 holdups. He said he believed his father “was looking for retribution,” Police Chief Benjamin Ramos told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

Ramos said his officers were called late yesterday afternoon by a Hertz investigator trying to track down a 2015 Cadillac Escalade 40 days overdue after being rented out of California.

The investigator pinged the vehicle’s location through a tracking device to a Brinkerhoff Avenue address, where officers found the vehicle in a parking garage, the chief said.

Detective Shawn Lee said he spoke with Cedric Frierson, who identified himself as Thomas Yearwood and “requested that we speak to him away from his apartment because he did not want to alarm his two children,” ages 13 and 14.

He also claimed that he was from Colorado and was holding the vehicle for a friend who’d rented it, the detective said.

Lee told him that a computer check on his driver’s license came back as not on file, then asked him repeatedly whether it was legitimate and what address it bore, Ramos told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Frierson/Yearwood “all of sudden became extremely nervous and could nt give a response, stating that he was simply nervous about the whole ideal,” the chief said.

After asking for other ID and getting a membership card with the name that was on the California rental agreement, Lee warned Frierson that he faced arrest.

At that point, Frierson admitted his true identity, Ramos said.

After having him empty his pockets, Lee spotted a New York driver’s license with Frierson’s photo — and yet another name.

Frierson then said “he had name legally changed because he was on the run from his father, Jerome Frierson-Bey, who[m] he had to testify against for bank robberies he had committed,” Lee reported.

Frierson-Bey, who’d been convicted of the 1990 robbery of a Newark bank was awaiting sentencing on kidnapping, carjacking and armed robbery convictions when he and a fellow inmate escaped a Georgia jail in 1996. The two then committed a string of bank holdups that drew headlines from New Jersey to the Carolinas.

FBI agents captured Frierson-Bey as he sat in a car outside a Lyndhurt hotel in April of that year after “America’s Most Wanted” featured him on one of its programs. He was carrying a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol and two loaded magazines, they said.

Frierson-Bey’s attorney at the time told the govermment that he was afraid for his own life after two close relatives were slain in New Jersey and South Carolina.

Police yesterday learned that Cedric Frierson actually had four of his children with him in the Palisades Park apartment. They included two adults — 20 and 21 — who’d taken the Yearwood name, Ramos said.

Lee also found Frierson’s wife hiding in a closet, he told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Like her husband, she couldn’t repeat the address on her Colorado driver’s license, the chief said.

She also had a New York driver’s license with a different name, as well, he said.

A computer check at police headquarters after the Friersons were taken into custody turned up warrants for both of them out of Florida and Georgia and for Daeva Frierson out of Washington, Ramos said.

“The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office (GA) confirmed the suspects via driver’s license photos and Orange County (FL) sent mugs shots of the suspects,” the chief said.

Both also requested detainers on the couple should they make bail.

Palisades Park police charged both with hindering arrest and being fugitives from justice.

MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF

PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Senior Correspondent Kevin Teel (top), CLIFFVIEW PILOT (above)

PHOTOS: Emergency responders extricated a male driver and took him to the hospital following a head-on crash outside Teterboro Airport this afternoon.

Little Ferry and Hasbrouck Heights firefighters freed the man, whose leg was pinned beneath the dashboard of his Chevy Cavalier in the 11 a.m. crash on Industrial Avenue.

Hasbrouck Heights EMS transported him to Hackensack University Medical Center.

The driver of the other car, a BMW 750Li, refused medical attention for head bruises.

Moonachie First Aid & Rescue and Hasbrouck Heights, Moonachie, New Jersey Transit and Port Authority police also responded.

PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Senior Correspondent Kevin Teel

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: An Englewood woman torched her car in an attempt to collect on the insurance and her boyfriend tried to cover for her, a grand jury in Hackensack charged.

Katima Mccullough, 33, “was behind on car payments and dodging repossession,” Detective Capt. Timothy Torell told CLIFFVIEW PILOT following her September 2013 arrest.

Police and firefighters responding to the fire call found McCullough’s 2007 Nissan Murano ablaze on Elmore Avenue in the city’s Fourth Ward, Torell said.

“No one was in or around the vehicle and the responding firefighters immediately saw signs of an intentional setting,” the captain said.

McCullough “initially denied any knowledge of the fire and then made an insurance claim,” he said.

City police detectives and Fire Department investigators teamed up with members of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crimes Arson Squad.

Besides learning McCullough’s history with the car, they canvassed the area and recovered surveillance video from nearby buildings, Torell said.

It showed her and her boyfriend, Armar Moore, running from the scene of the fire, he said.

The indictment charges Mccullough with deliberately starting the fire in order to destroy the vehicle, owned by LIberty Savings LLC.

Moore, meanwhile is charged with lying to police in an effort to “hinder the detention, apprehension, investigation, prosecution, conviction or punishment of another.”

MUGSHOTS: Courtesy ENGLEWOOD PD

UPDATE: A 10th-grader at Indian Hills High School in Oakland was in the Intensive Care Unit at Hackensack University Medical Center, expected to recover from his injuries, after fracturing his skull and spine during a gym horseplay mishap this morning.

A source with direct knowledge of the 7:45 a.m. incident told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that the boy had climbed a set of mats to get to a ladder that school personnel use to hang netting for sports practices when he plunged several feet, missing a pad and hitting his head on the floor.

The boy was conscious, his mother with him, as he was airlifted by AirMed One from the high school field, responders said.

Fortunately, he didn’t sustain a spinal cord injury, they said.

Franklin Lakes dispatched a mutual aid engine to back up Oakland firefighters. Borough police also responded.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Two men who police said clipped an Applebee’s manager with their car after double-dooring the restaurant were indicted today on robbery charges.

Keith Koeppel, 56, of Lodi Michael Comas, 24, of Cliffside Park are accused of “using force upon and / or inflicting bodily injury” with a Cadillac Escalade on the manager following a theft last Oct. 14.

The manager, who refused medical attention, told police that the pair spoke to one another in English and Hebrew while in the Hackensack Avenue restaurant just off westbound Route 4.

When they left without paying, he chased them into the lot.

Hackensack police arrested Koeppel at his home on Nov. 13 after a viewer recognized the North Bergen native in a story posted about the incident.

Comas was taken into custody at his girlfriend’s house in Stamford, CT six days later.

Each posted $50,000 bail — down from an original $250,000 — and were released within days of their arrests.

MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF 

SURVEILLANCE IMAGES: Courtesy HACKENSACK PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Four people from Queens tried running and were arrested, and a fifth remained at large, after Fort Lee police said they caught them with 200 gallons of stolen gasoline loaded into a van at a Route 4 service station.

Officers Brett Howard and Tony Pickens rolled up after a caller summoned them to the Shell station on westbound Route 4 Monday afternoon.

They found the group loaded containers full of gas into an Econoline van, Detective Capt. Stanley Zon said.

One of them yelled, “Cops!” and they all scattered in different directions, he said.

“Several ran into Route 4 traffic, climbing highway divider fences,” Zon said. “Others ran behind and up embankments attempting to flee onto a nearby road.”

Howard and Pickens “had their work cut out for them,” split up and caught four suspects, the captain said.

In the process, the officers spotted the defendants tossing forged and altered credit cards with different account numbers and names from their pockets into trash bins behind buildings, he said.

Backup officers joined the pair and found 40 full containers of gas in the van and others left partially filled at the pumps — clearly a hazardous and potentially lethal situation, Zon said.

Detectives determined that the defendants bought the gas with the bogus and stolen credit cards — several of which were also found in the van.

The New Jersey Stat Police Commercial Vehicle Unit was contacted “for assistance and follow-up,” Zon said.

Held on $25,000 bail each in the Bergen County Jail were Kimarley Myers, 22; Kemar Orane, 23; Von Bhoorasingh, 21, and Fabion Hendricks, 19.

They are various charged with credit card crimes, ID theft, hindering, receiving stolen property and possession of burglar tools.

CVP EXCLUSIVE: A judge yesterday set a fall trial date for a Colombian national who was living in Fairview when authorities say he killed his girlfriend’s 1-year-old girl by beating her and holding her head under water in a bathtub.

Presiding Superior Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi set an Oct. 4 date in Hackensack after the prosecutor in what is the oldest active murder prosecution in Bergen County said yesterday that she won’t offer Yoher Jiminez, 28, a plea deal.

Jimenez and his attorney were seeking a charge less than murder, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Maria Rockfol said, and she couldn’t agree.

“So there was no offer,” she told the judge.

Defense attorney Ian Silvera said that the baby’s mother, Jackline Jimenez, “most likely is going to be a witness.”

The Jimenezes had just moved from a relative’s house in Hasbrouck Heights to Harding Place in Fairview when she went shopping in April 2010, leaving Baby Victoria — the daughter of a different father — with him.

Police called to the home later found Victoria unresponsive. She was first taken to Palisades General Medical Center and then transferred to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Paterson, where it was discovered that she had a skull fracture and several rib fractures.

She died a few days later after being removed from life support.

Charges were upgraded to murder against Jimenez, who denied killing the child.

She “was in the crib and [I] heard the baby coughing and gave her water,” Jiminez told CLIFFVIEW PILOT through a relative at the time. “Then [I] came back to check on her and she was pale and her lips were purple.”

Jackline Jimenez was charged with child endangerment after investigators determined that she knew enough not to leave Victoria alone with her boyfriend because of “past abuse at [his] hands,” Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said at the time.

The INS also sought to detain her. After a month in the county jail, she was released.

A grand jury indicted Yoher Andres Jiminez in 2011 and a trial originally was scheduled for June, 2013. Jimenez demanded that he be allowed to represent himself, however, and filed several motions from jail.

Meanwhile, a person claiming to be a representative for him approached CLIFFVIEW PILOT contending that Victoria’s spinal cord was severed as emergency workers tried to resuscitate her.

Jimenez is charged with first-degree murder, and child abuse of Victoria, whom he had “a legal duty to care for,” as well as with lying to police to deter prosecution or punishment.

He remains held $1 million bail in the Bergen County Jail. The INS also will look to deport him once the case is resolved.

STORY / PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A trio of quick-thinking Port Authority police officers handcuffed a suicidal 22-year-old man to a George Washington Bridge railing before pulling him back to safety.

Officers found the emotionally disturbed man on the other side of the railing of the closed north walkway just before 2 a.m. today, the authority’s Joseph Pentangelo told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

A contractor called them after seeing him get out of his 2014 Honda CVR on the westbound upper level and sprint toward the walkway.

The distraught man told responding Officer Christopher Arroyo, Alex Baez and Kaitlyn Van Woudenberg that he wanted to die, Pentangelo said.

He then asked Arroyo to fetch his cellphone from his car “so he could say goodbye to his family,” he said.

Sensing the opportunity, Arroyo inched closer, asking the man for his cellphone passcode.

Once he got close enough, Pentangelo said, Arroyo “reached over the railing, grabbed him in a bear hug and pinned him.”

Van Woudenberg grabbed one of the man’s arms and held it, while Baez cuffed him to the railing.

“He struggled to push off the outer railing to break free,” Pentangelo said, “but the handcuffs and their physical strength prevented him from doing so.”

The contractor joined in, and all four hoisted the 5-foot-10-inch, 200-pound man back onto the walkway. He was taken to Bergen Regional Medical Center and the Honda was impounded.

Arroyo, a U.S. Army and Marine Corps veteran who served two combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was knocked to the pavement during the struggle and was treated for a minor knee injury, Pentangelo said.

Like Arroyo, Baez joined the PAPD in 2002.

Van Woudenberg is a recent graduate of the 113th PAPD Academy Class who joined the department last year.

It was the 13th save in 2015 for PAPD officers, who had 74 last year.

There have been two confirmed suicides from the bridge so far this year — both men were strangers who jumped within minutes of one another.