Skip to content
POLICE TRANSPARENCY NJ
Menu

Fatal Encounters record · Independent third-party dataset

Christopher Clark

May 23, 2020 · Paterson, Passaic County

Details as recorded

Every value below is shown exactly as Fatal Encounters recorded it.[1]

Name as recorded
Christopher Clark
Age as recorded
26
Gender as recorded
Male
Race as reported
African-American/Black
Date of the injury resulting in death
May 23, 2020
Location as recorded
Paterson, Passaic County16th Ave and Summer St Paterson NJ 7501 Passaic
Highest level of force as recorded
Gunshot

Where the dataset places it

The location Fatal Encounters recorded for this death: Paterson, Passaic County

The marked point is the dataset's own geocoded location for this record, as recorded. Every other New Jersey record in the dataset is shown in gray. A point on a map is where a death was recorded, not a finding about anyone.

Agencies as recorded

Agency or agencies involved, as recorded: Passaic County Sheriff's Office

An agency appears here because it appears in the record's as-reported agency field, nothing more. Its presence is not a claim of fault or responsibility.

Department pages (matched by this site at high confidence)

The source's account

Fatal Encounters' description of the incident, verbatim. This is the source project's own third-party narrative, not this site's reporting.

Three officers responded to report of shots fired at around 1:10 a.m. When they arrived, they saw Clark on Summer Street. As officers approached, Clark ran, and the officers chased him onto 16th Avenue, where Deputies Americo Escobar, Helman Fava, and Jose Vargas shot and killed Christopher Clark.

Source reported by Fatal Encounters: https://whyy.org/articles/n-j-releases-video-in-paterson-police-shooting-of-christopher-clark/ (external link, as recorded in the dataset).

If you are a family member of the person named here, or represent one, and something in this record is wrong, or you want the record removed, requests go through the corrections page. Every request is checked against the source record.

This is one of 19 New Jersey records the dataset dates to 2020, and one of 36 it holds for Passaic County across 2000 to 2021. Browse every New Jersey Fatal Encounters record by year.

Records from the same county and year

Questions and answers

What does the Fatal Encounters dataset record about this incident?

Fatal Encounters records that Christopher Clark died on May 23, 2020 in Paterson, Passaic County, with "Gunshot" as the highest level of force. Fatal Encounters is an independent, crowdsourced dataset of deaths that occurred during police encounters of any kind; a record is not a finding of fault or misconduct.

Which agency or agencies were recorded as involved?

The record's agency field reads "Passaic County Sheriff's Office". Presence in that field means the agency appears in the record as reported, nothing more; it is not a claim of fault or responsibility by any officer or agency.

Where did this happen?

The record places the death in Paterson, Passaic County, on May 23, 2020. The address as recorded is 16th Ave and Summer St Paterson NJ 7501 Passaic.

Sources

  1. [1]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Row 3262. Derived from the public Fatal Encounters national dataset (coverage 2000-2021; collection ended December 2021), https://fatalencounters.org/. Retrieved July 10, 2026. ↩