NJ shuts down party during coronavirus crisis, charges party host
New Jersey police shut down a party involving nearly 50 people as authorities try to tamp down large gatherings that could spread the coronavirus, officials said Saturday.
Members of the Ewing Township Police Department broke up the party on Friday night after finding 47 people, including a DJ, crammed into a 550-square-foot space, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy posted on Facebook.
“The organizer was charged as they should have been and deserved to be,” Murphy posted.
Further details of the party and police response were not disclosed. A call to the Ewing Township Police Department for information was not returned.
“This is not a game,” Murphy said about the police action and the rapidly spreading disease that is ravaging the nation. “Stay home. Be smart.”
Murphy said that 11,124 New Jersey residents had tested positive for the coronavirus as of 1:30 p.m. Saturday. So far, 140 people in the state have died.
New Jersey saw 2,289 COVID-19 cases pop up in the state in the last 24 hours.
Sickened residents seemed to be clustered in Bergen and Essex counties, which had 1,838 and 1,086 cases respectively, officials said.
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