Police Brutality / Individual record
Daniel Wolfe
The Washington Post's Fatal Force database records Daniel Wolfe in a fatal on-duty police shooting on 2015-04-21 in Trenton, NJ. Individual circumstances and legal outcome require case-specific review.
- Record ID
- PB-159
- Incident date
- April 21, 2015
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Trenton, NJ
- Agency
- New Jersey State Police
- Category
- Fatal on-duty police shooting
- Age (reported)
- 35
What happened
Daniel Wolfe, 35, was shot and killed by a New Jersey state police detective on April 21, 2015, in the Vauxhall area of Union Township. State authorities said officers were surveilling a Jeep Cherokee reported stolen in a carjacking and moved to arrest Wolfe after he entered it. Officials alleged he drove the vehicle in a manner that threatened officers, including striking a nearby vehicle; a detective then fired into the Jeep. The state attorney general's shooting response team investigated. In October 2016, a Union County grand jury determined that the detective's use of deadly force was legally justified. Fatal Encounters independently records the shooting in Union, not central Trenton, despite that broader location appearing in some national dataset entries. The initial police allegations and later grand-jury finding are distinct parts of the record.
Investigation & findings
Individual legal and investigative outcome not yet reviewed.
Washington Post Fatal Force v2; 2015–2024
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- 537
- Race code in source
- B
- Race source method
- not_available
- Gender (source)
- male
- Flee status (source)
- not
- Agency IDs (source)
- 576
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Fatal Force v2 — fatal on-duty police shootings, 2015–2024The Washington Post · Dataset