Skip to content
POLICE TRANSPARENCY NJ
Menu

Fatal Encounters record · Independent third-party dataset

David Powell

March 28, 2011 · Piscataway, Middlesex County

Details as recorded

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

Name as recorded
David Powell
Age as recorded
46
Gender as recorded
Male
Race as reported
European-American/White
Date of the injury resulting in death
March 28, 2011
Location as recorded
Piscataway, Middlesex County130 Parkside Ave. Piscataway NJ 08854 Middlesex
Highest level of force as recorded
Gunshot

Where the dataset places it

The location Fatal Encounters recorded for this death: Piscataway, Middlesex 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: Piscataway Township Police Department

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.

After a seven-hour standoff, David Powell, a 22-year veteran of the police force, stepped onto his front porch and sprayed shots from a 9mm submachine gun. Police, "concerned for the safety of the public and the safety of the possible hostages," shot and killed him.

Source reported by Fatal Encounters: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/03/as_commander_of_swat_team_pisc.html (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 32 New Jersey records the dataset dates to 2011, and one of 26 it holds for Middlesex 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 David Powell died on March 28, 2011 in Piscataway, Middlesex 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 "Piscataway Township Police Department". 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 Piscataway, Middlesex County, on March 28, 2011. The address as recorded is 130 Parkside Ave. Piscataway NJ 08854 Middlesex.

Sources

  1. [1]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Row 18848. Derived from the public Fatal Encounters national dataset (coverage 2000-2021; collection ended December 2021), https://fatalencounters.org/. Retrieved July 10, 2026. ↩