NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—City police are investigating a double-stabbing that injured one man and a 17-year-old juvenile on June 23.
The incident occurred at about 9pm inside a home on Comstock Street, but cops refuse to identify the victims, who are also suspects because they allegedly stabbed one another.
“The identity of the second individual is being withheld as its release could compromise the identity of the juvenile,” said New Brunswick Police Department (NBPD) Captain JT Miller.
The suspect-victims refused to cooperate with the NBPD’s investigation of the incident, according to Miller, who serves as the department’s spokesperson.
“Both individuals were uncooperative with the officers and gave conflicting stories as to what occurred,” said Miller. Â “Witnesses stated that the two individuals fought each other and stabbed each other during the altercation inside the residence.”
Miller confirmed that both male individuals were hospitalized, and each was charged with Aggravated Assault and “weapons possession charges.”
Police also appear to have misled the public about the location of the incident, by way of the information provided to the press via Captain Miller.
The incident actually occurred much closer to Rutgers University’s Cook/Douglass campus than to Remsen Avenue, according to emergency radio transmissions.
Those transmissions revealed that the actual crime scene was located at 66 Comstock Street, between Jones and Commercial Avenues, more than two blocks away from where Miller had indicated.
Typically, police provide the closest “cross-street” to the location of a crime scene, not one that is several blocks away.
The misleading location information from Miller was published in reports by NJ.com’s Spencer Kent, and the Home News Tribune’s Suzanne Russell.
New Brunswick Today, however, pressed Miller about the misleading information, and his refusal to identify the adult charged in the stabbing. Â But Miller did not have a substantive response.
“I have released all of the information I am prepared to release at this time,” Miller said, in what has become a common refrain for him since the NBPD took away the public’s ability to listen to their radio transmissions in January.
Members of the public can still listen to EMS and Fire Department radio transmissions, just not what the police are saying, at:Â https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/7225/web.
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.
