Grand jury declines to charge cop who fatally shot New Brunswick senior

The New Brunswick officer who shot an elderly woman to death last summer during a standoff at her home will not be criminally charged.

Officer Josue Plaza was among several officers who responded last Aug. 8 to a high-rise for senior citizens after a building staffer reported a disruptive tenant was threatening her neighbors with a knife. A seven-minute standoff with resident Deborah Terrell, 68, ensued, and officers shot her with pepper spray and a stun gun before Plaza fired his gun at her twice when she emerged from her apartment and approached officers with a knife.

She died shortly after at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.

Prosecutors from the state Attorney General’s Office presented the case to a state grand jury, as it does with all police-involved fatal encounters. The grand jury voted Monday against filing criminal charges.

Terrell’s family has held several protests over her death, saying she had schizophrenia and needed mental health treatment and not a violent police response.

Law enforcement officers, under both state law and policy directives, must contact mental health specialists when dealing with barricaded people experiencing a mental health emergency. The requirement came after several high-profile police killings of people in mental crisis, including Victoria Lee in Fort Lee, Najee Seabrooks in Paterson, Andrew Washington in Jersey City, and Gulia Dale III in Newton.

In 2024, former Attorney General Matt Platkin issued a directive ordering officers to “slow and stabilize” encounters in barricade situations, bring a mental health professional when responding to barricaded people, wait instead of forcing their way inside, bring less lethal weapons like Tasers to such calls, and immediately involve a supervisor. The state also has a program, called Arrive Together, that pairs police with mental health professionals in all 21 counties.

Tormel Pittman, Terrell’s nephew, declined to comment to a New Jersey Monitor reporter Wednesday. But he said the family plans to rally at the New Brunswick police station Saturday, the one-year anniversary of his aunt’s death.

Zayid Muhammad, lead organizer of New Jersey Communities for Accountable Policing, called cops’ conduct during their encounter with Terrell “bad on all sides.”

“It wasn’t one police officer involved; it was four. And someone is behind a closed door in their own home, and you insist on trying to force your way in? That’s not de-escalating the situation. That’s escalating the situation. And then after Ms. Terrell had been wounded terribly, they literally dragged her body down the hallway like it was a sack of garbage. No one has explained or even addressed why that happened,” Muhammad told the New Jersey Monitor.

He pointed to the body count of people in mental crisis killed by police in New Jersey, noted that all were people of color, and said policymakers must revamp emergency response to ensure mental health responders and community-based violence intervention teams are “built in” to that response on every such call.

“Those supports should be in place and available on a 24/7 basis, like fire and ambulance are,” he said. “There’s a need for some real fundamental questions and reexamination about these kind of situations.”

The Attorney General’s Office has said that limited resources and safety concerns have kept mental health providers from accompanying police on every call with a mental health component.

Plaza joined the department in 2018. He was suspended for eight days in 2022 for conduct unbecoming after police were called to his apartment complex and found he was intoxicated, had damaged a common area, and was “discourteous” to the responding officers, according to the state’s annual reporting on major discipline levied on law enforcement.