A 37-year-old Bergen County man has been charged with attempting to kill his neighbor by slashing her skull with a machete in their apartment building one morning this week.
Josue G. Corea of Fairview was charged with first-degree attempted murder less than an hour after the startling occurrence on Tuesday at a building on Day Avenue.
He has been arrested several times for violence in recent years, including last summer’s road rage incident in which he pulled a knife on a victim.
Tuesday machete attack
At 10:10 a.m., Fairview police responded to 911 calls and discovered a 49-year-old female victim with a severe cut to her skull and wounds on her hands.
According to Corea’s arrest affidavit, surveillance video showed the attack on a communal stairwell.
We took the victim to Hackensack University Medical Center, where her condition is stable.
The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crimes Unit was alerted, as were nearby police departments, and Cliffside Park officers detained Corea around 10:45 a.m. on River Road in Edgewater.
While awaiting his initial appearance in Bergen County Superior Court, we brought Corea to Bergen County Jail.
In addition to attempted murder, he was charged with second-degree aggravated assault, third-degree possession of a weapon for an illegal purpose, fourth-degree evading arrest by flight, and fourth-degree possession of a weapon.
Defendant has violent arrest record
On June 28, Secaucus police stopped Corea on Paterson Plank Road after receiving an allegation of him threatening another driver, according to Hudson County View.
According to the same report, authorities found a 7-inch fixed-blade knife in Corea’s car and charged him with two weapons offenses.
According to court documents, Corea received a four-year probation sentence for a previous unlawful firearms charge in 2018.
In November 2012, Corea faced charges of aggravated assault on police officers. He eventually pled guilty to a similar narcotics crime and received a two-year probation sentence in 2014 after spending 298 days in jail.
