A Hunterdon County grand jury has indicted Franklin Township police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro on charges of official misconduct and tampering with public records for what prosecutors describe as a breathtaking failure to respond the night two people were shot and killed near his patrol area. Three 911 calls came in reporting gunshots and screaming. Bollaro, the only officer on duty, drove the other way, stopped at an ATM, spent time at local restaurants, including a pizzeria, and never reached the victims, NJ.com reported.

Lauren Semanchik, a 33-year-old veterinarian from Long Valley, and Tyler Webb, a 29-year-old mechanic and volunteer firefighter from Ocean County, were found dead the next morning outside Semanchik's home at 39 Upper Kingtown Road. Her father discovered them when he arrived to take her to a local festival on the morning of August 2, 2025.

The man who killed them was New Jersey State Police Lieutenant Ricardo J. Santos, Semanchik's ex-boyfriend. Santos took his own life in Middlesex County. The indictment against Bollaro does not accuse him of pulling any trigger. It accuses him of abandoning his duty while two people lay dead or dying less than 600 feet from where he briefly stopped, and then lying about it in his official report.

The timeline prosecutors laid out

Santos followed Semanchik home from work on the evening of August 1, 2025, captured on a footage device she had installed in her vehicle. He approached her property on foot around 6 p.m. Webb arrived at approximately 6:45 p.m.

At 7:08 p.m., a resident at 41 Upper Kingtown Road, the house next door, called 911 to report gunshots and screaming. Two more 911 calls followed. A dispatcher alerted Bollaro to all three.

He acknowledged them. Then, prosecutors say, he drove in the opposite direction.

The second call came in while Bollaro was at an ATM. After the third call, he finally drove toward the scene, without activating his lights or siren. He arrived 17 minutes after the initial dispatch. He spoke to one caller without turning on his body camera. He spent a total of 12 minutes in the area. At one point he came within roughly 562 feet of Semanchik's house.

Then he went for pizza. AP News reported that Bollaro spent nearly two hours at local restaurants, including Duke's Pizzeria, during the period he later claimed in his incident report to have been canvassing the area. GPS data and surveillance video contradicted his written account, forming the basis of the tampering charge.

A second-degree felony and what it carries

The official misconduct charge is a second-degree felony under New Jersey law. The tampering with public records count is a non-indictable disorderly persons offense. The New York Post reported that Bollaro faces up to 10 years in prison and a $150,000 fine if convicted on the misconduct charge.

Bollaro, 52, has been suspended from the Franklin Township Police Department. The Hunterdon County Prosecutor's Office took day-to-day control of the department in August 2025, shortly after the murders. Top officers were suspended. Control was returned to local leadership with new management in May 2026.

The case is part of a broader pattern of police leaders facing accountability when official conduct crosses the line from poor performance into potential criminality.

The defense pushes back

Bollaro's attorney, Charles J. Sciarra, issued a forceful statement challenging the indictment. He framed the charges as an overreach that criminalizes a bad night on the job rather than actual wrongdoing.

"At the absolute very worst, Kevin Bollaro, with an unblemished record for 24 plus years, did a bad job at his job on that day. That is not a crime and they cannot make it one, no matter how much some people hate cops."

Sciarra said the defense has obtained thousands of dispatch call records and intends to show the court how routine such calls were and how common the responses Bollaro gave. He argued that nothing Bollaro did or failed to do could have changed the outcome, that Semanchik and Webb were already dead by the time the calls came in.

Sciarra addressed the victims' families directly in his statement:

"But worst is the torment that these families will endure. Their loved ones were assassinated at close range by a maniac who then went and killed himself and nothing Kevin Bollaro did or did not do could change any of that."

He added that the families "will not get it from the criminal prosecution of Kevin Bollaro, a local police officer who had nothing to do with any of this domestic violence tragedy and was just starting his shift when these calls came in some time after their loved ones were murdered."

Two lives cut short

Semanchik and Webb met at a pop-punk concert in Asbury Park in May 2024. She was a veterinarian. He was a mechanic and volunteer firefighter. They had been dating for roughly a year when Santos killed them both.

Semanchik had ended her relationship with Santos in late 2024. After the breakup, Santos allegedly began stalking and harassing her. The Hunterdon County Prosecutor's Office has said it is investigating complaints Semanchik made about Santos, a line of inquiry that raises hard questions about whether state police took those complaints seriously.

The failures here may extend well beyond one sergeant's pizza run. When a state police lieutenant with the authority and training of law enforcement allegedly stalks his ex-girlfriend, and a local officer allegedly ignores 911 calls about the resulting violence, the system has failed at multiple levels. Cases of officers facing charges for false statements are not new, but the stakes here, two people dead, make the alleged dishonesty in Bollaro's report especially grave.

Families prepare to sue

Both victims' families have announced plans to sue three police departments. The specific departments were not identified in available reporting, but the families' lawyers described Bollaro's conduct as the "tip of the iceberg of the many failures by the local and state police."

Angela Webb, Tyler Webb's sister, did not hold back. She said she wished she "could have had just a minute with the coward that did this to them, and to the coward who chose to let them sit out there for hours while he ate pizza & hung out at an inn while on duty."

The civil suits will likely probe whether Semanchik's prior complaints about Santos were mishandled, and by whom. That question sits at the center of a much larger accountability problem. When someone reports a law enforcement officer for stalking and harassment, the institutional incentives to look the other way are obvious. Whether those incentives prevailed here remains an open question the Hunterdon County Prosecutor's Office says it is examining.

The indictment of a police officer on serious criminal charges is never a routine matter. It joins a growing list of cases, including a police chief in Indiana charged with misconduct and theft and an Ohio police chief facing a 70-count indictment, that test the public's trust in those who wear the badge.

What remains unanswered

Several questions hang over this case. Did Bollaro know about the relationship between Semanchik and Santos? What specific complaints did Semanchik file about Santos, and which agencies received them? Were those complaints acted on? And if Semanchik and Webb were indeed already dead before the first 911 call, as the defense contends, does that change the legal calculus on official misconduct, or only the moral one?

Sciarra's argument has a certain cold logic: you cannot save someone who is already dead. But the indictment is not just about whether Bollaro could have saved them. It is about whether a sworn officer heard reports of gunshots and screaming, drove the other way, hit an ATM, grabbed a slice, and then lied about all of it in his official report.

If the GPS data and surveillance footage say what prosecutors claim they say, Bollaro's written account was not a mistake. It was a fabrication.

The overwhelming majority of police officers do their jobs with courage and integrity, often at great personal risk. That is precisely why cases like this one matter. When an officer allegedly abandons his duty and covers his tracks, he does not just fail two victims, he undermines every colleague who answers the call.