Police Officer Hailed as Hero in Woodbridge Mall Shooting

Woodbridge Police Officer Edward J. Barrett, 32, is being credited by authorities with saving the life of a 62-year-old woman who was being held at knifepoint by a suspected shoplifter and parole violator at the Woodbridge Center Mall Thursday night.

"I don't know all the details," Mayor John McCormac said in a broadcast interview. "All I know is the cop was a hero. He literally saved the woman's life and we're very, very proud of the job that he did." 

Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan and Director Robert Hubner said Barrett dropped Andres Garcia, 44, with a bullet to the head after Garcia held a knife to the throat of a 62-year-old female shopper while trying to flee from police.

Barrett was in uniform and had arrived at the mall for extra-duty work when he was alerted to a suspected shoplifting at Hollister Co., a trendy clothing store on the main level of the mall in the wing.

With three mall security guards, Barrett approached Garcia, a Paterson man sought by authorities since last September on charges of violating his parole on a robbery conviction, the prosecutor's office said.

"Officer Barrett and the mall guards chased him to the entrance of Sears, where Garcia grabbed the 62-year-old woman by the hair, held a knife to her neck and repeatedly threatened to kill her," Kaplan and Hubner said. 

They said the woman’s husband tried to hold onto his wife as Garcia dragged her into the store, adding, "Officer Barrett repeatedly warned Garcia to drop the knife before firing the single shot that struck Garcia in the head at 5:15 p.m." 

Authorities said the woman and her husband were not harmed. Their identities are being withheld.

"If the officer had not done what he did, it's very possible that there would be a different victim, an innocent victim," Mayor McCormac said. 

Barrett has been a member of the Woodbridge Police Department since December 2005 and is currently assigned to the radio patrol division. A department announcement of his swearing-in described him then as an Iselin resident who graduated from J.F.K. High School and his father, Edward Barrett, as a senior officer with 25 years in the department.

A March 2008 announcement from the township credited the younger Barrett with participating in the arrest of four armed robbery suspects.

Garcia's late Thursday afternoon rampage ended in the area of the Sears electronics department, near one of the store's two exits which open onto parking lots, a mall source said. He was pronounced dead at the scene a little more than 15 minutes later, at 5:32 pm. An autopsy by the Middlesex County Medical Examiner's Office showed Garcia had died from a gunshot wound.

The prosecutor's office is continuing its investigation and anyone with information is asked to call (732) 745-3300.

Additional information will be released as it becomes available.