Ignored by the editors, enraged 100-year-old kills his wife

Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street in Hackensack at 4:44 p.m. on Monday, one month after Hue D. Dang, 64, was fatally injured in or near the crosswalk by an unmarked car driven by Detective Sgt. John C. Straniero of the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office. After Hackensack police declined to file any charges, the investigation was taken over by the Union County Prosecutor's Office.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Can you "accuse" a dead man of homicide?

The brain-dead editors at The Record of Woodland Park say you can in the very first paragraph of today's report on a centenarian who killed his 88-year-old wife with an ax before committing suicide (A-1).

Even the headline on the Page 1 story is vague, referring to the killer, Michael Juskin of Elmwood Park, as being "at the center" of the case:

"100-year-old at the center of murder-suicide"

The headline should have said he killed his wife, Rosalia, with an ax, and then the sub-head could have mentioned he suffered from dementia.

A sidebar reviews similar cases in recent years, and concludes "the elderly population is often underserved by services for battered woman and overlooked by research on domestic violence" (A-6).

Gee. Shouldn't the editors of the Woodland Park daily admit how they also have ignored seniors with dementia and Alzheimer's disease for years, preferring to publish overwrought stories on children with autism?

Why 9 months?

At the center of today's rare all-New Jersey front page is a court photo of the sister and mother of Genesis Rincon, the 12-year-old who was slain in Paterson last July (A-1).

But the story on L-1 doesn't explain why the two defendants are being arraigned nine months after the fatal shooting.

Maybe it took that long for the accused killers' families to come up with the hefty retainer needed to land representation by attorneys Harvey Briete and Matthew Cavalier.

Judging from the photo on L-1, Briete's hourly rate apparently has to pay for suits that cost a couple of thousands of dollars each as well as hand-tied bow ties.

Briete also is given to hyperbole -- dismissing a plea bargain with a 40-year prison sentence for his 20-year-old client as a "life sentence," according to the paraphrase on L-1.

Another look

On Monday, I re-visited the T-intersection of Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street in Hackensack, where Hue D. Dang, 64, a Vietnamese-American woman who lived a few blocks away, was struck and fatally injured by a car one month before.

I took a photo at 4:44 p.m., the time police said Dang was hit by Detective Sgt. John C. Straniero's unmarked car, which was turning right toward the Route 80 west ramp.

Hackensack police said they didn't know where Dang was standing when she was struck, and didn't mention the Jackson Avenue crosswalk to the reporter who wrote The Record's only story on the case, on March 11.

No charges filed

Police didn't file any charges against Straniero, 49, who lives in Wayne and works for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

They did note "a large amount of sun glare from the west," but that shouldn't have obscured the view of Dang, who appeared to be in or near the Jackson Avenue crosswalk when she was hit.

Dang's feet landed in the crosswalk when she fell parallel to the passenger side of the car.

And, according to a neighborhood woman I spoke to on Monday, a plastic grocery bag she had been carrying landed near a wheel on the detective's silver Ford Crown Victoria.

The victim was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.

The Union County Prosecutor's Office took over the investigation, and on March 31, a spokesman said I should check back in "several weeks."