Author: ECCYC

TAP Into Another Town’s News:

Hackensack certain persons attorney Adam M. Lustberg releases a new article (https://www.lustberglaw.com/certain-persons-offense-attorney/) explaining “Certain Persons Not to Have Weapons” Charges in Bergen County, Essex County & Passaic County, New Jersey. The lawyer mentions that New Jersey has the N.J.S.A. 2C.39-7 Gun ownership is prohibited for convicted felons, misdemeanor offenders, drug users, and those with certain mental illnesses.

“An individual commits a Certain Persons offense when they are classified as not being allowed to possess firearms or other weapons and are then caught in possession of such a weapon. If you meet the criteria for a Certain Person offense and are caught with a firearm or other weapon, you can be charged with both unlawful possession of a weapon and a Certain Persons offense,” says the Hackensack certain persons attorney.

The lawyer explains that licenses for firearm permits are not available to individuals who have been convicted of certain criminal offenses or are suffering from a particular mental illness. If they are caught carrying a gun and fall within the category of persons who are not permitted to own a firearm they can be charged with unlawful possession of a weapon as well as a personal offense.

Attorney Adam M. Lustberg says that gun owners who are covered by the Certain Persons Act regarding the prohibition on gun possession have been convicted for crimes such as homicide, aggravated assault, arson, burglary, extortion, child endangerment, domestic violence, domestic harassment, stalking, and any weapons offenses.

In the article, attorney Lustberg also adds that those who have been previously committed to a psychiatric hospital or mental institution, who have been convicted of the use, possession, or sale of a controlled dangerous substance, or who are under court order not to possess a firearm are legally prohibited from possessing a gun in New Jersey.

Attorney Adam M. Lustberg says, “A Certain Persons grading often depends upon the nature of the weapon possessed. If a certain person is caught with a weapon other than a firearm, it is a fourth-degree offense. If the weapon possessed is a handgun or any other firearm, it is a second-degree offense; however, if the conviction is for a disorderly person offense involving domestic violence, it is a third-degree offense.”

Lastly, attorney Lustberg emphasizes the importance of having a skilled lawyer when it comes to matters such as being charged with “certain persons” offenses. An experienced lawyer may be able to help the defendant protect their rights and their freedom.

About Lustberg Law Offices, LLC

Lustberg Law Offices, LLC works with criminal cases in New Jersey or New York. It has earned a reputation for delivering results for clients. Attorney Adam M. Lustberg understands the difficulties that can arise when someone is facing serious criminal charges. He will answer questions and work with the client to help them understand what’s going on and the next steps in their case. Call them today to schedule an appointment.

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For more information about Lustberg Law Offices, LLC, contact the company here:

Lustberg Law Offices, LLC
Adam Lustberg
+1 201 880 5311
[email protected]
One University Plaza Dr Suite 210, Hackensack, NJ 07601, United States

All New Jersey school busses are required to have at least lap seat belts for every passenger. Since 2019, all newer busses must have three point belts for all students.

However, how many kids are buckling-up each day is still a huge question.

Marking the four year anniversary of a deadly school bus crash in Paramus, a New Jersey Congressman is proposing a new federal law to make seat belts mandatory on all school busses nationwide, as well as incentives for compliance.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-5) has named his legislation “Miranda’s Law,” after fifth grader Miranda Vargas.

Vargas, who was 10 at the time, was killed on class trip four years ago when the bus she was riding in was hit by a dump truck on Route 80. Teacher Jennifer Williamson also perished in the accident.

“With Miranda’s Law,” Gottheimer said in a statement, “We can help ensure that every child in America will be as safe as possible aboard a school bus, and we’re giving parents and families more peace of mind.”

Miranda’s Law will:

• Require seat belts on all school buses nationwide;
• Establish three-point lap-and-shoulder seat belts as the national standard; and,
• Encourage innovative measures to ensure students actually wear their seat belts while on school buses.

Joevanny Vargas, Miranda’s father, met with members of congress last year to try and get their support for school bus safety legislation. “This is not a New Jersey problem,” Vargas said at the time, “This is a national problem that needs to be addressed before we’re confronted with another tragedy.”

The House did pass several school bus safety initiatives as part of a larger transportation bill, but none of those provisions were approved by the Senate.

Gottheimer says he will pursue separate legislation, including the seat-belt law, in hopes of gaining bi-partisan support.

“Miranda’s Law will help save lives,” Gottheimer says, “There’s nothing partisan about that.”

Eric Scott is the senior political director and anchor for New Jersey 101.5. You can reach him at eric.scott@townsquaremedia.com

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Gov. Phil Murphy has declared a state of emergency over the ongoing baby formula shortage in New Jersey and nationwide.

The primary goal of the action is prevent the crisis from getting worse by retailers engaging in price gouging.

Murphy had a warning for those who might seek to take advantage of the shortage. “To any retailer who may try to take advantage of vulnerable families during this shortage, let me be clear that this reprehensible action will not be tolerated,” Murphy said in a statement.

Under the Consumer Fraud Act, price increases for baby formula may not be increased more than 10%.

Acting Attorney General Matt Platkin says the Division of Consumer Affairs will be monitoring prices, and will investigate any reports of price gouging by consumers.

“Individuals or merchants looking to make a profit by violating the law during the current state of emergency will face severe penalties,” Platkin said.

The governor says he has spoken to two major baby formula companies in New Jersey in an effort to help them increase production and capacity.

White House officials and the Food and Drug Administration have announced the restart of a baby formula plant in Michigan that had been shut down for possible contamination.

The Biden administration is also accelerating foreign imports of infant formula.

Neither action is expected to have an immediate impact, and it could be several weeks before the formula shortage starts to ease.

Shortages of specialty formulas for infants with nutritional or other medical conditions are particularly critical. Doctors in Tennessee says they have had to admit two infants to the hospital because their parents could not obtain the proper formula.

In Congress, Democrats are preparing a $28 million aid package, but the impact remains unclear.

Much of that money would go to the FDA to “ease supply chain issues,” but exact steps are unclear.

Republican opposition was already forming.

In New Jersey, the New Jersey Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC) recently instituted formula substitutions so that program participants can replace their special formulas with other types of formula, as dictated by their doctor.

The Department of Health is offering guidance for families impacted by the shortage.

Visit nj.gov/babyformula for more information.

Eric Scott is the senior political director and anchor for New Jersey 101.5. You can reach him at eric.scott@townsquaremedia.com

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A suspended Keansburg Police Officer has admitted to sexually assaulting an unconscious woman months after being sworn into the department as a Class II Officer.

Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Lori Linskey announced Wednesday that 25-year-old Nicholas Thompson, 25, has pleaded guilty to a second-degree charge of Attempted Aggravated Sexual Assault and that it’s expected he’ll lose his job and head to prison for several years.

Thompson was arrested and charged in early October of 2021 at which time Keansburg Police Chief Wayne Davis announced his suspension without pay pending the outcome of the investigation, case.

The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office team investigating the report learned that Thompson was in a private residence and sexually assaulted the woman while she was unconscious and incapable of consent.

Following his guilty plea, which Acting Prosecutor Linskey said was reached after the victim was consulted, Thompson will no longer be allowed to work in public office, must register as a sex offender under Megan’s Law, be under parole supervision for life and serve 4-years in state prison with 85 percent of the term to be served prior to the possibility of parole under New Jersey’s No Early Release Act.

“Police officers are expected to be held to a higher standard of conduct, on duty and off – and should never bring harm to others,” Acting Prosecutor Linskey said in a written statement. “We feel that this plea agreement provides justice to our victim and renders the appropriate outcome for an inexcusable act. The actions of this defendant do not reflect the diligent efforts of our county’s law enforcement officers, who safeguard and serve their communities each and every day.”

This case was assigned to Monmouth County Assistant Prosecutor Melanie Falco, Director of the Office’s Professional Responsibilities and Bias Crime Unit.

Thompson has been represented by Mitchell Ansell, Esq., with an office in Ocean Township.

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MIDDLETOWN — Weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, a sign of life was found in the rubble at Ground Zero — a pear tree with cracked roots and burned branches.

Now known as the Survivor Tree, it was nursed back to health and its cuttings were used to produce a limited number of clones. And one of them now has a home in the Garden State.

Middletown Township is the first municipality outside of New York City to receive a clone of the tree that endured the attacks in 2001.

Donated by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, the 15-foot tree was transported via motorcade Tuesday to the Middletown World Trade Center Memorial Gardens. The tree was greeted by a large U.S. flag presented by the local fire department, and the U.S. Naval Weapons Station Earle Color Guard presented the colors to begin the ceremony.

“Here in Middletown, we promised that we would never forget the 37 residents that lost their lives on that day,” Mayor Tony Perry told New Jersey 101.5.

Middletown recorded the greatest number of 9/11 losses after New York City.

Perry said the cloned offspring will be planted at the Gardens ahead of the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Last year, the memorial site received new landscaping and lighting, as well as a walkway of personalized bricks.

“This is a tremendous gift from NYC Parks that we will forever cherish,” Perry said.

Since its rehabilitation, the original Survivor Tree was delivered to the National 9/11 Memorial in 2010.

“New limbs have extended from the gnarled stumps, creating a visible demarcation between the tree’s past and present,” reads the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s website.

Dino Flammia is a reporter for New Jersey 101.5. You can reach him at dino.flammia@townsquaremedia.com

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PENNINGTON — A teacher accused in a lawsuit of being a sexual predator faces new allegations from a former student who says she was lured and drugged in a 2016 sex assault.

Despite the accusations, Mark Amantia has never been charged with a crime and an attorney for the teacher and school district has called the young woman’s accusations “unfounded.”

The woman’s attorney, however, says another former student has now voiced support for concerns regarding Amantia.

Amantia has denied all allegations made by Sara Stillitano, now 19, who three years ago said she fended off a classroom sex assault by her middle school history teacher in 2017.

Stillitano said she stabbed him with a pencil in order to get away as he exposed himself to her and pushed her against a wall.

Amantia, in a legal certification filed in the lawsuit, said the allegation “was preposterous when it was first made, it was preposterous when a different version of it was articulated a year later and it remains preposterous now that it has been repeated in a civil lawsuit — all three versions differing.”

Amantia calls the new allegations — involving luring, drugging and arranging an off-site sex assault by a third party — “also preposterous.”

Stillitano has leveled new allegations in a lawsuit filed on May 9, saying that in 2016, Amantia lured her into his car, gave her drug-laced water and then facilitated her sexual assault by another man in a row-house in Trenton.

In an interview with NJ.com, Stillitano said she had repressed the memory of the assault in Trenton and only through therapy was able to piece it together.

There has been a swell of support among the community, according to Stillitano’s attorney, Brian Schiller, including details now shared by another former student of Timberlane Middle School, who had Amantia as a teacher from 2001-2002.

“He was inappropriately touching female students even back then,” the unnamed former student wrote in an email to Schiller and the current schools Superintendent of Hopewell Valley Regional.

“During my eighth grade year at Timberlane he would massage my neck and shoulders during class, a routine he did with several other female students as well. During class as he was walking around the classroom teaching he would stand behind a female student, place both hands on either side of our shoulders and begin rubbing our necks, shoulders and sometimes even back.”

“He would stand in the door frame of the class from time to time forcing a physical contact as we would head into the classroom. So many red flags went off about this man when I was younger but at the time I was too young to understand why,” the student wrote.

After allegations were first filed in a January 2019 lawsuit, Timberlane Middle School reported it to the Hopewell Township Police Department and Amantia was placed on administrative leave. Amantia was never criminally charged.

He has not worked in a classroom since then but currently is a technology trainer with the district.

“HVRSD did not reassign Mark to an administrative position because it believed that Ms. Stillitano’s claims had any validity,” attorney Eric Harrison said in a written response to New Jersey 101.5. “Mark was reassigned because Ms. Stillitano’s allegations, compounded by her attorney’s threats and publicized statements to the press, created such hysteria in the HVRSD community that the administration decided that returning him to the classroom would create a distraction likely to have an adverse impact on HVRSD students.”

History of complaints

Schiller said the “district knew that Amantia was a danger to young girls since at least 2005 when the mother of an 11-year-old student reported his inappropriate sexual behavior/touching of another child to the principal.

He said that the district’s claim that those allegations did not involve “physical touching or any other improper behavior” is a lie.

“They protected Amantia then, and they have continued to protect him now,” Schiller said.

“Rather than apologize for what happened to Sara, the district has resorted to victim shaming. This type of tactic is disgraceful, and it will not be tolerated,” Schiller said in a written statement sent to New Jersey 101.5.

‘Unvarnished truth’

According to her lawsuit, Stillitano and a female classmate first reported concerns to a school guidance counselor, saying that Amantia had given them unwanted massages at lunch and in his classroom in front of other students, teachers and lunch aides.

She also said that Amantia would “hip check” her when she entered his classroom and stand uncomfortably close while in class.

Stillitano said she reported such concerns three times before Thanksgiving break 2016.

The school district disputes that — saying that Stillitano made just two reports about Amantia in February and March 2017.

“This phrase – ‘he is just friendly’ has been repeated to young teenage girls in distress by the District when they have reported concerns about Amantia,” Schiller said.

“When we send our children to school, we expect the adults who work there to look after them and to protect them. Unfortunately, that did not happen in this case, and a young girl had her innocence stolen from her,” he said.

On Monday, the attorney for Amantia and the Hopewell Valley Regional School District filed a motion to quash the suit.

Amantia also asked that the court delay requests by Stillitano’s attorney for previous statements made to police, so that she could not reconcile inconsistencies to provide anything but the “unvarnished truth” as she recalls it.

The previous allegations against Armantia prompted a public show of support by a number of community members who voiced concerns at a November 2019 Board of Education meeting.

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“There is no implied or explicit threat to these communities,” Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon following the reported mentioning of Lakewood Township and Toms River Township in the 180-page “manifesto” of the Buffalo shooter.

Since news of those mentions came out, local and county investigators have looked into these claims and have reached out to the public to urge vigilance but also work to help keep everyone calm in knowing there is no threat.

Lakewood Township Police Chief Gregory Meyer, Toms River Police Chief Mitch Little, and Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer have each released statements over the last 24-hours regarding the shooting in Buffalo over the weekend.

“In response to Saturday’s events in Buffalo the Lakewood Police Department has added extra patrols and we are working with our law enforcements partners in providing extra security for our community,” Lakewood Police Chief Gregory Meyer said in a written release.

“In light of this weekend’s tragedy in Buffalo, we’d like to assure our community that the TRPD understands your concerns and will take a measured response to any threat level presented, and identical to that of previous school shootings, church shootings, mall shootings or attacks to any particular group nationwide,” Toms River Police Chief Mitch Little said in a written statement. “If the threat level to our residents were to increase, security measures would naturally be increased. The cooperation of the community is also very important. If you see something, say something. If you have experienced an incident personally, we urge you to contact TRPD at 732-349-0150. We obviously denounce any hate, and every complaint we receive is dealt with extreme care and concern. As always, stay vigilant and stay safe!”

Here is the statement, in full, from Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer.

“The events that transpired in Buffalo, New York this past weekend were horrific and tragic. Unfortunately, these mass shootings have become far too common. We must resist the tendency for these horrific acts to become routine. All lives have value, none of us are expendable. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the families of those that perished due to the senseless acts of violence that occurred in Buffalo on Saturday. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the brave men and women in law enforcement in Buffalo that were able to subdue the shooter and prevent further bloodshed.

When, like the events in Buffalo, the shooter is motivated by hate and animus, it becomes even more difficult to fathom and process. It is imperative that we reject hate and bias in all of its’ insidious forms. As the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in Ocean County, I have made it very clear that acts of bias intimidation will not be tolerated and every allegation regarding a bias incident or crime will be investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We will do everything in our power to protect the most vulnerable members of our communities.

At this point in time I have had the opportunity to read and digest what has been referred to as the shooter’s one hundred and eighty page “manifesto.” While Federal and New York State law enforcement officials are still working to verify this document’s authenticity, the document includes despicable anti-Semitic, white supremacist and radicalized racist memes and tropes with repeated references to “replacement theory.”

A reference in the document to Lakewood and Toms River raised concerns locally here in Ocean County. The Ocean County Prosecutor’s High-Tech Crime Unit has been able to discern that these references to Lakewood and Toms River were copied by the shooter and incorporated into his “manifesto’ from a 2020 article written and published on the internet by a different author. This theme rings true with the majority of the “manifesto,” as it includes numerous references that were either copied and/or cut and pasted from other sources on the internet. Large portions of this “manifesto” were actually copied from the Christchurch shooter’s 2019 manifesto.

I can state, unequivocally, that there is no evidence that the shooter had any intention or inclination to travel to anywhere in Ocean County. Furthermore, based on what we know at this time, the shooter has no ties to New Jersey. I have confirmed this information with the New Jersey State Police Regional Operations Center and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As a lifelong resident of Ocean County, I can certainly understand how the mention of two of our local municipalities in such a misguided and dangerous document could raise concern. To that end, I have spoken with Lakewood Township Police Chief Gregory Meyer and Toms River Township Police Chief Mitch Little and I can assure residents of Lakewood and Toms River that although there is no implied or explicit threat to these communities, law enforcement stands ready to respond to any critical incident that may arise. Additionally, the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office and the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office will work around the clock to ensure that all of our residents feel safe in their respective communities. Our State and Federal law enforcement partners have offered their assistance as well.

We will remain vigilant against acts of violence based on hate or bias. As parents, children, friends and neighbors we must continue to stand up to hate and condemn acts of violence based on the color of someone’s skin, how they worship or who they love.”

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