WESTFIELD – A Chester man who allegedly carjacked a vehicle at Colonial Pine Acres apparently drove it home to take a nap.
Westfield police responded to the 50 Southampton Road apartment complex on Friday, March 16, and found two female victims who explained how a white male suspect forced them from their car and drove it away.
Det. Richard Mazza reports in a court document that the man first “lured the passenger from the car by telling her the car was leaking fluid” and then got into the passenger seat. The man told the driver to drive forward so he could show her what was wrong with her car and, after about 50 feet, told her to stop and get out of it. The driver said that the man then got out of her passenger seat and ran around to the driver’s side where he got in and “sped off in the vehicle”.
Both women provided detailed descriptions of the suspect and Mazza found that the nearby Holiday Inn Express had security video images of a man who “matched the description of the suspect and was living out of a pickup truck registered to him, parked in the rear parking lot” of the motel.
The pickup was registered to Roy M. Reidy Jr., 54, of 697 Skyline Trail, Chester.
State police were asked to check the man’s address and a trooper found “the stolen vehicle parked in the driveway of his registered address, while the defendant was sleeping in the driver’s seat. The vehicle was running and the defendant was wearing the exact clothing description that was provided by the victims.”
The victims had told Mazza that there had been $600 in cash, two iPhones, a designer purse and various credit and identification cards in the car when it was stolen.
Reidy was arrested for carjacking, larceny of a motor vehicle and larceny of property valued more than $250. He was arraigned in Westfield District Court on Monday and was held in lieu of $500 cash bail pending an April 13 hearing.
