NEWARK – Recordings of 911 calls made by the widow of slain Hoboken attorney Dustin Friedland revealed that it took 18 minutes for first-aid responders to reach the scene of the crime at the Short Hills Mall last month, according to the Newark Star-Ledger, which obtained the tapes.
“We called an ambulance a half an hour ago: where is it?” said Jamie Schare-Friedland to a 911 dispatcher several minutes after a group of men shot her husband in the head and stole the couple’s Range Rover.
Millburn Police Chief Gregory Weber acknowledged that it took an ambulance even longer to respond to the murder, which took place in a parking garage, because the ambulance could not fit under the garage’s ceiling. The ambulance staff was forced to roll a stretcher up the garage’s ramp to reach Friedland, Weber said.
According to the Ledger, the tapes reveal a confusing conversation between Schare-Friedland and 911 dispatchers, who claimed that the ambulance was at the mall, though they apparently could not locate Schare-Friedland and her wounded husband.
The shooting took place around 8:30 p.m. Friedland died at Morristown Medical Center around 11:45 p.m., nearly three hours after the shooting.
Despite a section of the tape that shows Schare-Friedland alleging that emergency services failed to respond for 30 minutes, Weber confirmed to the Ledger that it was 18 minutes, though he admitted further 911 calls from the evening could not be located and that he was unsure some of the ambulance’s activities on the night of the murder, according to the Ledger.
Since the murder, prosecutors have charged four men with the murder: Karif Ford, 31, Basim Henry, 32, and Kevin Roberts, 35, all of Newark, and Hanif Thompson, 29, of Irvington. The four men pleaded not guilty last week. – Dean DeChiaro
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