Seize armed fugitive behind wheel: cops

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

A 24-year-old armed Bayonne fugitive was arrested Monday in a Jersey City traffic stop after being on the lam for almost 18 months after escaping from a Newark halfway house, police reports said.

Ivan Navarro, 24, of Bayonne, was charged with possession of cocaine and marijuana, possession of a weapon for unlawful purposes and unlawful possession of weapon by a person prohibited from having weapons because of felony convictions.

Jeanette A. Perer, 20, of Hoboken Avenue in Jersey City, a passenger in the car, was charged with possession of a weapon for unlawful purposes and unlawful possession of weapon, police said.

Plainclothes cops spotted the car on Washburn Street with a broken front windshield and broken tail light. After pursuing the car with their lights and sirens, the driver finally stopped at Pavonia Avenue and Chestnut Avenue, reports said.

Officers saw the handle of a handgun sticking out of a pink bag on its side on the rear seat and recovered a 9-mm semiautomatic Ruger and also found a magazine with 10 rounds of bullets for the gun, reports said. Two small bags of suspected cocaine and a partially burned marijuana cigarette were in Navarro's right pocket, police said.

Navarro's car had an unauthorized emergency siren and lights, police said.

Navarro was identified from fingerprints as a convict who escaped from a Newark halfway house on Aug. 3, 2008, four days after he was transferred there from a Trenton facility.

Navarro was sentenced on Dec. 7, 2007 for drug dealing and received three to five years. After initially serving time at a youth correctional facility in Bordentown, he was moved to an education and training center in Trenton and was then sent to the Newark halfway house, officials said.

CHARLES HACK