A former New Jersey police officer has been convicted of vehicular homicide after prosecutors said his pickup left the Garden State Parkway, went airborne and crashed into a car below, killing a Baltimore husband and wife in Tinton Falls in October 2021.
A Monmouth County jury sitting in Ocean County found John P. McClave III guilty of two counts of second-degree vehicular homicide after a weeklong trial. The verdict closes the trial phase of a case that drew attention because McClave was on his way to work as a Hillside police officer when the crash happened. He now faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in state prison, and prosecutors have said New Jersey law would require him to serve 85% of any sentence before he could become eligible for parole. Sentencing is tentatively set for May 8.
Prosecutors said the crash unfolded shortly before 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 9, 2021, near the Garden State Parkway overpass at Asbury Avenue in Tinton Falls. Police officers and members of the Wayside Fire Company responded to a report of a serious collision and found two vehicles involved: a 2018 GMC Canyon pickup driven by McClave and a 2020 Toyota Corolla driven by Angel L. Acevedo Jr., 40, of Baltimore. Acevedo’s wife, Daniela Correia Salles, 35, was riding in the passenger seat. Both suffered severe injuries and were pronounced dead at the scene. McClave, who lived in Toms River, was taken to Jersey Shore University Medical Center with serious but not life-threatening injuries. Monmouth County Prosecutor Raymond S. Santiago said investigators determined the pickup did not “change direction or slow down significantly” after it left the parkway lanes.
According to the prosecutor’s office, investigators concluded that McClave was driving recklessly and was under the influence of intoxicating substances when the collision happened. The official account said the truck left the elevated roadway, hit an embankment and became airborne before striking the victims’ car on the road below. Follow-up court reporting cited an affidavit saying a blood sample taken after the crash tested positive for THC, the main intoxicating compound in marijuana, while McClave’s blood alcohol level was below New Jersey’s legal limit for drunken driving. Traffic summonses filed with the case included reckless driving, failure to maintain lanes, failure to wear a seat belt and having an open container of alcohol in a vehicle. Public summaries of the case do not appear to spell out an exact speed for the truck at the moment it left the roadway, and that detail was not included in the prosecutor’s conviction announcement.
The victims’ histories gave the case a reach far beyond the crash site beneath the overpass. Acevedo grew up in New Jersey, attended Henry Hudson Regional School, earned an engineering degree from Dartmouth College and later completed a master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School, according to the couple’s obituary. He went on to work for the U.S. Army and rose to a communications leadership post at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Salles grew up in Salvador, Brazil, became a doctor of pathology and moved to the United States to continue her medical career. By the time of the crash, the couple were living in Baltimore, but relatives described them as people who stayed closely tied to family and friends across state lines and countries. In the obituary, relatives wrote that “the simplest pleasures in life” brought them joy, including hiking, photography, skiing and time with loved ones.
The legal path to the verdict stretched across nearly four and a half years. Prosecutors announced the charges in March 2022, about five months after the crash, saying the evidence had moved the case beyond a traffic fatality and into criminal conduct. Then-Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Lori Linskey said at the time that McClave’s alleged actions had “far crossed the line” between negligence and criminality. Authorities also said he had been suspended without pay by the Hillside Police Department after charges were filed. A later state major-discipline report said McClave resigned from the department effective Aug. 8, 2023, while he was still awaiting trial. The case was then transferred to Ocean County Superior Court on Nov. 13, 2024, because of what prosecutors described as a potential conflict of interest. Judge David M. Fritch presided over the weeklong trial, and prosecutors identified Assistant Prosecutors Joseph Cummings and Sarah Mielke as the lawyers who tried the case.
The proceedings also carried the weight that often follows cases involving law enforcement officers accused of crimes while off duty or on the way to work. When the charges were first filed, Hillside Police Chief Vincent Ricciardi said he was “disappointed” by McClave’s arrest and said the department would take the appropriate employment action when the criminal case ended. Earlier defense arguments previewed a central dispute over impairment. In 2022, then-defense attorney Timothy Smith challenged the state’s reliance on THC testing and argued that blood levels alone were not reliable proof of marijuana intoxication at the time of the crash. The jury’s verdict shows that prosecutors convinced jurors beyond a reasonable doubt on the homicide counts, but public materials released after the verdict do not explain which pieces of testimony or forensic evidence carried the most weight in the deliberations. The prosecutor’s office identified Anthony Cherry of Eatontown as McClave’s attorney at the time of conviction.
The setting of the crash remained a stark part of the case from the start. It was not a collision at a stop sign or on a neighborhood block. Investigators said the pickup left elevated parkway lanes and dropped into traffic below, turning an ordinary drive under the overpass into a fatal scene in seconds. That image shaped both the prosecution’s language and the public’s memory of the case. It also sharpened the contrast between the technical language of court records and the lives described by family members. Acevedo was remembered as a steady engineer and leader with what relatives called a contagious laugh. Salles was remembered as bright, driven and optimistic. Those portraits gave the trial a human center even as it moved through toxicology reports, crash reconstruction work and jurisdictional transfers. What remains unresolved publicly is whether McClave will address the court before sentencing and whether the defense will seek to challenge the verdict through post-trial motions or appeal.
For now, the case stands at sentencing. Unless the court schedule changes, McClave is due back before Judge Fritch on May 8, 2026, when the court is expected to decide his prison term and the families of Acevedo and Salles are likely to hear the next and most consequential ruling since the guilty verdict.
Author note: Last updated March 22, 2026.