“Christine, it’s the wrong house,” the tenant told police one of them tell the other before she took down the license plate number of the silver Volkswagen that they drove off in following the Jan. 30 incident, Lt. Shawn Kudlacik told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Detectives traced the car to a Wayne woman whose daughter, 20-year-old Christine N. Brigida (above, left), used to live in Wallington, he said.
Brigida told investigators that the second defendant, Aleksandra Polkowska, 23 (above, right), solicited her for a ride “for dope money,” the lieutenant said.
Polkowska already was in the Bergen County Jail after Garfield police arrested her and another man in connection with a burglary there that netted several hundred dollars in cash and jewelry.
She remained held on $30,000 bail.
Brigida, meanwhile, was released without bail.
Both are charged with burglary.
The pair entered the two-family home on Hathaway Street on Jan. 30, Kudlacik said.
While Brigida walked into the first-floor apartment through an open front door, Polkowska headed upstairs, he said.
Confronted by the upstairs tenant, she used a ruse, saying that they were looking for someone named Stephanie, the lieutenant said.
They then took off.
MUGSHOTS: Courtesy WALLINGTON PD (left), BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF (right)
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