NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—Police and City Hall have confirmed rumors of a dead body found in a “wooded area off of Jersey Avenue near Comstock Street,” after a video appeared on Facebook showing firefighters and police in the area.
New Brunswick Today started asking questions after seeing the video on January 29, the same day police were asked to respond to the scene.
According to New Brunswick Police Department (NBPD) Captain JT Miller, police responded “to investigate the report of a deceased individual.”
“Upon the officer’s arrival they discovered the deceased body of an adult male. The preliminary investigation suggests suicide,” said Miller.
The area in question is near a commercial development that includes the city’s 24-hour Walgreens pharmacy and several other retail and restaurant establishments.
The project, started in the 2000’s, was developed by Edgewood Properties, a company owned by Jack Morris, a Piscataway-based developer.
Morris never followed through on his plans to build a supermarket and housing on the site, leaving much of the real estate along Jersey Avenue and Comstock Street a wasteland.
The land near those two streets, one of the few places where a pedestrian can easily cross the Northeast Corridor, the nation’s most trafficked passenger railroad, was the scene of the tragic death.
According to the person who posted the video on Facebook shortly before 10am, firefighters had just used a chainsaw to retrieve the dead body.
“They found somebody dead hanging from a tree, right next to Walgreens,” says the person narrating the cellphone video which was sent to New Brunswick Today. Â “They just cut him down with a chainsaw.”
In the background of the video is the offices of the city’s Board of Education, located at 268 Baldwin Street, on the other side of the tracks.
Charlie is the founder and editor of New Brunswick Today, and the winner of the Awbrey Award for Community-Oriented Local Journalism. He is a proud Rutgers University journalism graduate, a community organizer, and a former independent candidate for mayor of New Brunswick.
