Skip to content
POLICE TRANSPARENCY NJ
Menu

Fatal Encounters record · Independent third-party dataset

Lance H. Roberts

January 19, 2004 · Maplewood, Essex County

Details as recorded

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

Name as recorded
Lance H. Roberts
Age as recorded
43
Gender as recorded
Male
Race as reported
African-American/Black
Date of the injury resulting in death
January 19, 2004
Location as recorded
Maplewood, Essex County1618 Springfield Ave Maplewood NJ 07040 Essex
Highest level of force as recorded
Asphyxiated/Restrained

Where the dataset places it

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

Lance Roberts was arrested on criminal warrants and taken to police headquarters. He then was charged with the burglary of a Maplewood residence. He was placed alone in a holding cell, where an officer later found him hanged. Media reports don't state categorically whether he was booked, so this incident may be outside of FatalEncounters dataset, which does not include individuals after they've been booked into the jail or prison system.

Source reported by Fatal Encounters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sxZT7Bs2v0lX7XK0xQIdf6dKDLMTBbqJhom-6jOK7rw/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 31 New Jersey records the dataset dates to 2004, 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 Lance H. Roberts died on January 19, 2004 in Maplewood, Essex County, with "Asphyxiated/Restrained" 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 "Maplewood 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 Maplewood, Essex County, on January 19, 2004. The address as recorded is 1618 Springfield Ave Maplewood NJ 07040 Essex.

Sources

  1. [1]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Row 27614. Derived from the public Fatal Encounters national dataset (coverage 2000-2021; collection ended December 2021), https://fatalencounters.org/. Retrieved July 10, 2026. ↩