Richard Berdnik had been the sheriff of Passaic County, a suburb of the New York metropolitan area, since 2011
A New Jersey sheriff died by suicide on Tuesday after shooting himself inside a Turkish restaurant in the city of Clifton, according to local media reports.
Passaic County Sheriff Richard Berdnik reportedly entered the bathroom at Toros around 3:30 p.m. Patrons at the restaurant heard a gunshot soon after, according to a report by the Bergen Record . Police officers quickly arrived at the scene and blocked off multiple streets near the restaurant.
Berdnik, a retired police officer in Clifton, had been the sheriff of Passaic County, a suburb of the New York metropolitan area, since 2011 and was most recently re-elected to the position in November 2022.
Berdnik’s death comes less than a week after two sergeants and a sheriff’s officer were arrested by the FBI for allegedly beating a detainee at the Passaic County Jail in 2021 in retaliation for the man splashing a jail guard with urine, according to the Bergen Record .