Luke Stein Arrested – On Friday, a college student who had been sought in relation to a terrible traffic accident earlier this week that almost killed a different group of teenagers from Bergen County was apprehended in Colorado.
Luke Stein, 18, was apprehended on a warrant for a wanted person soon after noon on October 14 at Colorado University in Boulder, according to documents.
Stein, a volunteer firefighter in two Bergen County communities, will continue to be detained there as the county prosecutor’s office conducts a thorough investigation and extradition processes are underway to return him to New Jersey. Investigators stated that additional arrests might be made. In the collision just after midnight on Monday, October 10, two teenagers from Tenafly suffered serious injuries, while two others had severe injuries. The fifth was seriously injured.
When the group got into an altercation with the occupants of at least two other vehicles on 9W, they had just left a birthday celebration on Sunday night, according to various sources. Investigators think the group’s vehicle collided with another one that had what witnesses claimed to be blue flashing lights. In front of the Montammy Golf Club in Alpine, the victim’s car ended up rolling and colliding with a tree, according to their parents. The other two cars—possibly a third as well—then left the area, according to them. A father described it as “not kids racing” and a “hostile pursue with violent intentions.”
“There is a full[-]scale criminal investigation underway,” he said. “Many witnesses have stepped up and are working with the [authorities].”
“These aggressors deliberately tried to drive the car off the road, terrorizing the driver and the other passengers,” the Tenafly High School Home School Association wrote in a GoFundMe campaign. “One of the aggressors was impersonating a police cruiser by having a flashing light on his vehicle,” the association wrote. “He banged into the car… causing the driver to lose control and forcing the vehicle off the road and smashing into a tree.”
According to records, the 140-pound, 5-foot-8 Stein enlisted as a volunteer fireman in Demarest and Alpine, respectively, in July. The incident’s cause is still unknown with certainty. Tenafly, Cresskill, and nearby communities have been the subject of rumors and gossip concerning a purported slight that sparked a violent reaction. Authorities and investigators have not verified this. Despite suffering severe wounds, one of the passengers, Kevin Trejos, got out of the vehicle, made a 911 call, and assisted in freeing his friends. Eric Grant, whose daughter Ariana suffered critical injuries, wrote that if he hadn’t, “we’d be having five funerals.”
Ariana Grant’s injuries include a severely lacerated scalp, broken ribs, pierced lungs, fractured vertebrae in her neck and spine, and a broken arm and ankle, according to her aunt, Wende Grant Green. “It is a miracle she is alive and not irreparably damaged,” said Green, who launched a GoFundMe for Ariana.”So far she has had surgery to repair her scalp, two steel rods with six pins to secure her spine with a steel rod for her arm scheduled for [Oct. 13],” Green added.
According to GoFundMe material endorsed by his family, Jonathan Battaglia spent his 18th birthday recuperating in Hackensack University Medical Center from punctured lungs, a fractured leg, many fractures, a cut in his skull, and brain hemorrhaging. The driver, Mikkel Leutgeb, is also receiving treatment at HUMC. According to his family, he has facial injuries, a broken leg, and a damaged lumbar spine. According to the Tenafly High School Home School Association, Lital Aburus, another passenger, “underwent a 7-hour surgery on her damaged arm, in which rods and pins are now permanently binding together her bones.”
Lital “suffered numerous lacerations requiring countless stitches on her face and hands, broken bones in her back, bruised lungs, and broken jaw, eye socket, and teeth and palate,” the HSA wrote. “She will require extensive plastic surgery to repair her face. Her first of many reconstructive surgeries will be today to repair her jaw and eye socket with metal rods and pins.”
Although it was unclear exactly when Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella was anticipated to issue a release. Alpine police and the Bergen County Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Identification, which gathered evidence at the scene, are assisting Musella’s Fatal Accident Investigations Unit detectives in their investigation.
