Patrick McGovern | The Jersey
Journal
Closing arguments were given
yesterday in the trial of an Essex County Sheriff's officer accused of
threatening a woman inside his truck before she jumped from the vehicle.
John Warnock, 39, of Newark is
charged in a 2012 incident in which he allegedly threatened to kill a woman he
picked up at a bar in West Orange.
A phone call made to an
acquaintance during the alleged incident was at the center of the closing
argument given by Betty Rodriguez, acting assistant prosecutor and special
deputy attorney general for Essex County.
The trial was heard before
Judge Mitzy Galis-Menendez at the Hudson County Courthouse in Jersey City. The
trial was moved to Hudson County because Warnock works as an Essex County
Sheriff's officer.
According to Rodriguez, after
Warnock picked up the woman at a West Orange bar on Oct. 5, 2012, he mistakenly
made a call from his cell phone, which was in his pocket, to a woman who heard
him tell the woman in the truck, "Take your panties down," followed
by "Take your panties down or I'll kill you."
The accuser, 22, at the time of
the incident, feared for her life and jumped from the moving vehicle in Nutley,
said Rodriguez.
Defense attorney Patrick
Toscano argued that the accuser was looking to score a big payday from the
case.