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Fatal Encounters record · Independent third-party dataset

Christopher Minichini

January 15, 2015 · Nutley, Essex County

Details as recorded

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

Name as recorded
Christopher Minichini
Age as recorded
38
Gender as recorded
Male
Race as reported
European-American/White
Date of the injury resulting in death
January 15, 2015
Location as recorded
Nutley, Essex County300 Hillside Ave Nutley NJ 07110 Essex
Highest level of force as recorded
Gunshot

Where the dataset places it

The location Fatal Encounters recorded for this death: Nutley, Essex 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: New Jersey Department of Corrections

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)

What this site holds on the agencies named

Separate records, shown here so they can be found from this page. Nothing below is connected to this death. The Fatal Encounters dataset does not link the two, the Attorney General's releases do not, and neither does this site. The years each figure covers are printed for the same reason.

  • Department Of Corrections

    Reported 8,758 internal affairs investigations across 2021 to 2025. 577 major discipline records name officers at this agency.

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.

Minichini first killed his girlfriend, Cristina Prestaianni, and subsequently committed suicide by gun.

Source reported by Fatal Encounters: http://patch.com/new-jersey/caldwells/update-essex-county-murder-suicide-victim-was-west-caldwell-dog-groomer-baker-0 (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 31 New Jersey records the dataset dates to 2015, and one of 118 it holds for Essex 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 Minichini died on January 15, 2015 in Nutley, Essex 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 "New Jersey Department of Corrections". 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 Nutley, Essex County, on January 15, 2015. The address as recorded is 300 Hillside Ave Nutley NJ 07110 Essex.

Sources

  1. [1]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Row 12713. Derived from the public Fatal Encounters national dataset (coverage 2000-2021; collection ended December 2021), https://fatalencounters.org/. Retrieved July 10, 2026. ↩