An 18-year-old man charged as an adult with murder in the deaths of two teenage girls made his first court appearance in the case, in a hearing that marked the elevation of the prosecution out of juvenile court. Vincent Bataloro is accused of intentionally running the two girls down with his car as they rode an e-bike in Cranford, New Jersey.
The victims were best friends Isabella Salas and Maria Neotis. According to authorities, the two were riding an e-bike together on the evening of 29 September last year when they were struck and killed, deaths that shook the community of Cranford, in Union County.
Prosecutors say the crash was no accident, alleging that Bataloro deliberately ran the girls down with his vehicle. It is that allegation of intent that has led to the murder charges he now faces as the case moves into the adult court system.
At the hearing, which was held virtually, Bataloro agreed to be detained and will remain locked up as the case proceeds. He was placed under oath and consented, without prejudice, to detention, and prosecutors said the matter would be presented to a grand jury.
For the families, the decision to move the case out of juvenile status was significant. They welcomed the step, saying it was where the case belonged, after what they described as the confidentiality and limited information that came with the family court process.
An attorney for one of the victims' families said that before the crash, Bataloro had stalked their daughter and had made fake 911 calls to their home on multiple occasions. The families have raised questions about how earlier reports that he was harassing one of the girls were handled by police.
Those questions have been sharpened by the fact that Bataloro's father is a retired police officer and that he has a relative who is a police chief. As the state prepares its case, the families of Isabella Salas and Maria Neotis were left grieving two young lives cut short, one of them a budding performer who had spent years in theatre, while pressing for answers about how the case was handled.