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Fatal Encounters record · Independent third-party dataset

Najee T. Brown

March 20, 2001 · Hackensack, Bergen County

Details as recorded

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

Name as recorded
Najee T. Brown
Age as recorded
20
Gender as recorded
Male
Race as reported
African-American/Black
Date of the injury resulting in death
March 20, 2001
Location as recorded
Hackensack, Bergen County207 Central Ave. Hackensack NJ 07601 Bergen
Highest level of force as recorded
Gunshot

Where the dataset places it

The location Fatal Encounters recorded for this death: Hackensack, Bergen 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: Hackensack Police Department, Bergen County 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.

Officers were called to the same building where they said Najee Brown had gunned down his friend, Ryan Travis, 19, two days prior. As they converged on Brown, he walked down Central Avenue--past a row of two-story houses--firing a semiautomatic assault weapon at them. Police demanded that he drop the high-powered weapon, but he refused, and was shot and killed.

Source reported by Fatal Encounters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EluXmFXNIK3FPliCAxhxcMfISpftjUfgpDgySRyib2Y/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 24 New Jersey records the dataset dates to 2001, and one of 32 it holds for Bergen County across 2000 to 2021. Browse every New Jersey Fatal Encounters record by year.

Questions and answers

What does the Fatal Encounters dataset record about this incident?

Fatal Encounters records that Najee T. Brown died on March 20, 2001 in Hackensack, Bergen 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 "Hackensack Police Department, Bergen County 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 Hackensack, Bergen County, on March 20, 2001. The address as recorded is 207 Central Ave. Hackensack NJ 07601 Bergen.

Sources

  1. [1]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Row 30416. Derived from the public Fatal Encounters national dataset (coverage 2000-2021; collection ended December 2021), https://fatalencounters.org/. Retrieved July 10, 2026. ↩