Passaic County Sheriff Richard Berdnik died by apparent suicide inside the bathroom at Toros in Clifton
A New Jersey sheriff who fatally shot himself inside a Clifton restaurant apparently had been photographed with the owners minutes earlier.
Passaic County Sheriff Richard Berdnik died by apparent suicide inside the bathroom at Toros, a Turkish restaurant.
Huseyin Bayram and Cuneyt Gurkan’la were photographed Tuesday afternoon with Berdnik.
They posed with a key to the city of Paterson that Mayor Andre Sayegh had presented to Bayram earlier in the day for humanitarian efforts during the pandemic.
Berdnik had been the county sheriff since 2011.
“I affectionately refer to Richard Berdnik as America’s sheriff, because ever since he became our leader here in Passaic County, we had such an outstanding working relationship,” Sayegh said, according to the Bergen Record .
“He was always offering assistance, and especially recently, with the flooding, he was offering to have rescue vehicles readily available for us. I last saw him yesterday. We swore in eight new police officers … He seemed normal; we exchanged pleasantries.”