TRENTON – The Attorney General’s Office today released video footage from a private security camera and audio recordings of 911 calls and a police radio call related to a fatal incident in which a police vehicle struck a pedestrian on August 1, 2021 in East Brunswick. The pedestrian, Julius Filep, 55, of Edison, N.J., was critically injured and died in the hospital a short time afterward.

The fatal police encounter remains under investigation by the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA). The video is being released pursuant to policies established by the Attorney General in 2019 that are designed to promote the fair, impartial, and transparent investigation of fatal police encounters. Investigators met today with Mr. Filep’s family and their attorney to review the recordings.

According to the preliminary investigation, Officer Mitchell Ngai of the East Brunswick Police Department, who was on-duty and in uniform, was operating a marked patrol vehicle on State Route 18, responding to a reported motor vehicle accident in the southbound lanes of the roadway. He was traveling northbound in the vicinity of the reported accident at approximately 3:35 a.m. when he struck Mr. Filep, who was walking in the roadway in front of 260 State Route 18. Medical aid was rendered to Mr. Filep, who was transported by ambulance to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased at 4:13 a.m.

The recordings are posted online: Click here for recordings.

The investigation is ongoing and no further information is being released at this time.

This investigation is being conducted pursuant to a state law enacted in January 2019 (P.L. 2019, c.1), which requires that the Attorney General’s Office conduct all investigations of a person’s death that occurs during an encounter with a law enforcement officer acting in the officer’s official capacity or while the decedent is in custody. Separately, the Independent Prosecutor Directive, which was issued in December 2019, outlines a 10-step process for conducting these investigations. The Directive establishes clear procedures governing such investigations to ensure that they are conducted in a full, impartial and transparent manner. Under both state law and the Directive, when the entire investigation is complete, the case will be presented to a grand jury, typically consisting of 16 to 23 citizens, to make the ultimate decision regarding whether criminal charges will be filed.

A copy of the Directive is available at this link:
https://www.nj.gov/oag/excellence/docs/2019-4_Independent_Prosecutor_Directive.pdf,

and a summary of that 10-step process is available at this link:
https://www.nj.gov/oag/excellence/docs/The-Independent-Prosecutor-Directive.pdf

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