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Fatal Encounters record · Independent third-party dataset

Jerrell J. Jeter

April 10, 2008 · Irvington, Essex County

Details as recorded

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

Name as recorded
Jerrell J. Jeter
Age as recorded
not reported
Gender as recorded
Male
Race as reported
Race unspecified
Date of the injury resulting in death
April 10, 2008
Location as recorded
Irvington, Essex CountyUnion Ave and Nye Ave Irvington NJ 07111 Essex
Highest level of force as recorded
Gunshot

Where the dataset places it

The location Fatal Encounters recorded for this death: Irvington, 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: Irvington 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.

A robbery was under way when Irvington Detective Roman Melenka strolled into P&P Tobacco and Grocery at 5:05 p.m. for a soda. Two men had guns trained on the cashier. Five or six patrons watched, some lying on the ground, some with their hands in the air. One of the armed men, Jerrell Jeter, pushed him toward a refrigerator unit. The gunman fired at Melenka, hitting him in his upper left arm. The detective shot and killed Jeter.

Source reported by Fatal Encounters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dm97at_86gE1WRoAbCVoEoXTucWzq2LYnQjfWWWsNd8/edit?usp=sharing (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 23 New Jersey records the dataset dates to 2008, 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 Jerrell J. Jeter died on April 10, 2008 in Irvington, 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 "Irvington 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 Irvington, Essex County, on April 10, 2008. The address as recorded is Union Ave and Nye Ave Irvington NJ 07111 Essex.

Sources

  1. [1]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Row 22590. Derived from the public Fatal Encounters national dataset (coverage 2000-2021; collection ended December 2021), https://fatalencounters.org/. Retrieved July 10, 2026. ↩