Summit Grapples With Safety Issues 1 Year After Mazariego Murder

It's hard to believe it's been a year since one of the most historic days in Summit history.

One year ago, on July 17, 2010, 47-year-old Abelino Mazariego, a dishwasher at Dabbawalla, was on the streets of the Hill City.

In one year, much has changed. Summit has continued to grapple with safety issues downtown after a March 25 when, while she was walking in the alley next to the garage behind , she was struck by a few pipe couplings that were believed to be thrown from the top level of the four-level garage. The girl suffered a fractured skull, concussion and laceration to the head.

Read how the Mazariego family is coping, and not coping, with life one year later.

Common Council has been discussing the possibilty of installing a new network of downtown in the wake of this incident and has frequently to keep Summit safe.

But some good has come from this tragedy.

"If anything positive can come from something like this is it's that the community is a bit more sensitvie to others and to the different diversity within the community," said Mayor Jordan Glatt.

More specifically, Glatt said there has been more outreach to the Hispanic community on the part of all city departments.

"We're building more and more trust between city officials and that community," he said.

But Glatt says it's also been a personal priority.

"I realized that we had a group of residents who felt disconnected from the city on a lot of different levels and especially from city government and I wanted them to realize that if they were in our borders they have a voice," Glatt said.

C.H.A.T. (Community of Hispanics in Action) is one group that has formed in the wake of the murder. CHAT was created to address the need to have Hispanic parents and community members actively engage in the development of ways to communicate, integrate and educate the rest of the Hispanic community. The organization has sponsored several events for the Hispanic community including one recently on fire safety.

But this incident had ramifications city-wide, not just with the Hispanic community, Glatt said.

"Overall the community got a bit of a wake up call that this could happen anywhere," he said.

The Legal Case

According to officials with the Union County Prosecutor's Office, the case against five teens charged in the case is moving along but no trial date has been set.

Hakean Fitzgerald, 18, a sophomore at Summit High School was waived to adult court on Jan. 13, joiing Khayri Williams-Clark, 20 of Summit, and Nigel Dumas, 18 of Morristown, indicted on charges of felony murder, first-degree murder and robbery. Two additional juveniles were charged in July with conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit robbery, robbery and aggravated assault.

Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow said at a July 30 press conference that on the night of July 17, a 17-year-old and a 15-year-old served as lookouts while Williams-Clark, Dumas and the third unidentified minor planned to rob 47-year-old Abelino Mazariego who was relaxing on a park bench in the Promenade on Springfield Avenue after he finished his shift as a food-preparation worker and dishwasher at .

Mazariego was drinking alcohol, Romankow said, when the teens approached him. According to Romankow, the teens discovered that Mazariego had just cashed his paycheck, so they decided to rob him.

"It was a crime of opportunity," he said.

According to investigators, Williams-Clark stood behind Mazariego and held the victim's white T-shirt, which he had removed himself while lounging in the Promenade, over Mazariego's head while the 17-year-old punched him with brutal force. Dumas then allegedly punched the victim a second time.

The attack allegedly was recorded on a cell phone by one of the individuals in the area. The force of the blows knocked Mazariego unconscious and the teenagers then fled the scene, Romankow said. He added that the teen who videotaped the attack is not being charged.

"We don't believe that he knew there was going to be a robbery," Romankow said.

According to prosecutors, the teens fled the Promenade and went to nearby when they realized they had forgotten to take Mazariego's money and wristwatch. When they allegedly returned to the scene, approximately 15 minutes later, good Samaritans had discovered Mazariego slumped over on a bench, bleeding from the mouth and called the police.

When police arrived at the scene, they were unaware that a crime had been committed. Police didn't begin a criminal investigation until July 19, when Mazariego's wife, Julia Celina, notified the police that a video of her husband being beaten had surfaced.

When Mazariego was admitted to the hospital on July 17 it was at first thought he may have had a stroke or a brain aneurysm because of the bleeding in his brain. Mazariego was unconscious when he was admitted and never regained consciousness. He died on July 20.

All in all, Romankow said 14 teenagers, including several more from Morristown, witnessed the crime that night. He says that only the five charged knew what was going to transpire.

"We're confident that we charged the right number of people," he said.

Romankow said that he does believe that the teens punched Mazariego in the jaw with the intention of hurting him. He said that Mazariego was defenseless because he'd been drinking alcohol. The prosecutor's office has yet to release his blood-alcohol level.

"I don't think he was targeted as a Latino," Romankow said.