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Luciano Padila, 18, becomes the sixth man taken into custody, along with the 17-year-old boy, following a investigation launched two years ago involving a multi-jurisdictional task force of federal, state, county and local agents, investigators and officers. Acting Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal said.
A judge in Hackensack ordered Padilla held on $100,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with three counts of robbery, after detectives arrested him Wednesday morning in Paramus.
Already charged with attempted murder, robbery and other counts were the task force's prime suspect, 21-year-old David Thomas Jr. of Lodi.
He was being held on $750,000 bail after investigators on Wednesday charged him, Padilla and the juvenile with three additional holdups.
One was at a Sunoco gas station in Carlstadt on Dec. 26, another at a Delta gas station, also in Carlstadt, on Jan. 4 and an attempted robbery at Linden Grocery in Hackensack that same day, Grewal said.
The co-defendants who were charged last week: Cainan Samuels-Wallace, 18, and Jordyn Moses, 19, both also of Lodi; Louis Rendon, 18, of Moonachie; and Chaz Q. Johnson, 20, of Orlando, Fla.
Also taken into custody was the juvenile, who was on his way to commit a robbery with Thomas and Rendon when they were arrested on Jan. 21, Grewal said.
Four days later, task force members seized Samuels-Wallace and Moses, he said.
A week and a half ago, Johnson was arrested in Florida in connection with several holdups -- including the June 2014 robbery in which the attendant was shot, the prosecutor said.
The crimes include what Grewal said were two "brutal" assaults of gas station employees -- in Teaneck in May 2014 and in Garfield last month. READ MORE....
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