New Jersey officer stopped at ATM and pizzeria instead of investigating double-murder

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FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors say he didn't quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead stopping at an ATM and pizzeria.

Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) from Manhattan in central New Jersey, according to Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson's office.

But rather than responding immediately, prosecutors say GPS data and surveillance video show Bollaro drove nearly two miles in the opposite direction of the caller’s location to a bank ATM.

Dispatchers relayed other calls from concerned neighbors as Bollaro proceeded towards their locations without activating his police vehicle’s emergency lights and sirens, they said.

When he arrived at the location of the first caller, the officer told the dispatcher he didn't hear anything and said he would continue to the locations of the other callers. But Robeson’s office said GPS data shows he never visited those locations before he asked the dispatcher to clear him from the scene.

They say Bollaro instead headed to Duke’s Pizzeria in Pittstown, where he remained for nearly an hour. Witnesses later saw him park and enter another local restaurant, where he remained for roughly another hour, prosecutors said.

Bollaro later submitted a report in which prosecutors say he made false statements about the extent of his investigation. They note that during the timeframe he claimed to be canvassing the area, the officer was already on route to the pizzeria.

The following day, Aug. 2, the bodies of Lauren Semanchik, 33, and Tyler Webb, 29, were found in a home roughly 600 feet (183 meters) away from the location of the first 911 caller. Prosecutors say the two had been shot to death by New Jersey State Police Lieutenant Ricardo Santos, who had later killed himself.

Bollaro has been charged with official misconduct for knowingly refraining from performing his police duties, prosecutors said. He also faces a charge of tampering with public records for knowingly making false entries in his incident report.

Bollaro is due to appear in court Nov. 5.

His lawyer, Charles Sciarra, didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment Saturday but, in a statement to the New York Post, called the charges “unfortunate.” He maintained “nothing Kevin Bollaro did or did not do that day impacted or could have stopped” the killings.

The families of the two shooting victims, meanwhile, have said they are “shocked at Sgt. Bollaro’s egregious conduct” and believe it is the “tip of the iceberg of the many failures by the local and state police” in the killings, WABC-TV reports.