Crime & Safety

Happy Birthday! We Got You a Burglar!

Check out this bizarre police account from Haddonfield.

One woman got a very special birthday gift—a.

Mary Ann Zaleski of Haddonfield discovered a burglar leaving her home Tuesday, Zaleski's 53rd birthday, she said. She screamed for her neighbor, Angelica Jeffreys to help, and when the robber "took off like a rabbit," Jeffreys went after her, the two women said.

Zaleski herself and police soon joined into the chase, they said. Officers eventually found the alleged robber several hours later, police said.

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“I laid awake last night thinking about it,” said Jeffreys, 46, a marketing advertising professional, who works from home. “To be honest with you, if she had turned and come back at me I don’t know what I would have done, but it never occurred to me that was going to happen. I just wanted to make sure we kept an eye on her.”

Each Monday, Patch takes a peek at some of the more surprising, shocking, stunning and occasionally silly police-related incidents reported throughout New Jersey for "OMGs from NJ PDs." Some of the other reports:

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998 Bottles of Beer in the Frat, 998 Bottles of Beer: Our friends over at NJ.com report police siezed 998 cans of beer during a raid on a Rowan University fraternity house. Nearly 100 people faced charges after police broke up a massive party where they say there was plenty of underage drinking and other inappropriate behavior. None of the arrested ever starred with Dan Ackroyd in the Blues Brothers, to the best of our knowledge.

Doggone It, That's No Way To Behave: The employee of a Belleville pet-grooming business , police said. The incident reportedly began when the customer entered Prestige Groomer and asked the employee about prices. The customer then demanded to see the area where the dogs are groomed, but the employee refused—prompting the customer to pick up glass tip jar and throw it at the employee, police said. When the employee followed the customer out to the parking to to get her license plate number, the customer backed up quickly, almost hitting the employee, police said.

But Officer, I Was Only Going One Way: Sometimes cops have to keep a really sharp eye out for potential drunk drivers. Sometimes the drivers make it easy. Morristown's full of bars, so there's lots of reasons for police to carefully scrutinize late-night driving habits ... , not a lot of detective work is involved.

It Wiggled and Jiggled: A woman flipped her car in Maplewood after spotting a spider crawling on her, police said. Fortunately, the woman suffered only minor injuries. We're not sure how the spider did in the accident.

As We Always Say, You Don't Tug on Superman's Cape: DailyRecord.com reports a Randolph man already accused of stealing several items got in trouble again, when he allegedly stole another pair of sunglasses—from the Dover police chief's car. Officers noticed the car's light on, and found the man inside, police said. When they took him into police headquarters, they found the man was wearing their boss' $200 shades, police said. That's just not very bright.


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