A driver who cut off a police cruiser while making a left turn on Orange Road was pulled over and arrested, along with his two passengers, and charged with having an illegal handgun stowed in the car, police said.

An officer was heading northbound on Orange Road when Donald LaDolce III, 21, who was not wearing a seatbelt as he piloted a Pontiac Grand Prix, exited a driveway and pulled out in front of the police car, forcing the officer to make an abrupt stop, according to authorities.

Noticing that LaDolce wasn’t strapped in, the officer turned around, tailed the car and halted it at Orange Road’s intersection with Hollywood Avenue on Saturday, April 12 shortly after 5 p.m., police said.

LaDolce said several times that he was nervous when police were questioning him, "even though there was no significant reason to be nervous since he was stopped only for a motor vehicle violation," according to the police report.

The driver told officers he was not sure where he was headed, and that one of his passengers, Andre "Dre" Graham, 19, of Montclair, was directing him to an unknown location in either Orange or East Orange, according to investigators.

Finding the driver’s story and demeanor suspicious, police asked if they could search the car, and LaDolce signed a form giving them consent, police said.

Inside, officers found a black-and-silver Bryco-Jennings .380-caliber handgun, with its serial number defaced, stashed in the back pouch of the front passenger’s seat, authorities said.

LaDolce, Graham, and a 17-year-old boy sitting in the backseat were all arrested and charged with possession of a handgun and possession of a defaced firearm. The two adults were held pending the posting of $75,000 cash-only bail. The Essex County Youth Detention Center was notified of the juvenile’s arrest.

LaDolce was cited for driving offenses, including careless driving, not wearing a seatbelt, and driving an uninsured car.

"Anytime an illegal handgun is removed from the street, there is a good chance future crimes were prevented," stated Lt. James Carlucci of the Montclair police. "In all, this was an excellent job by the officers involved."

ASSAULT

A fight between two men on Pine Street ended with one combatant being throttled with a bat and hospitalized, police said.

According to police, the fight between Bloomfield resident Leon Collins, 31, and an unidentified 36-year-old man from Montclair broke out in the afternoon on Sunday, April 6. Collins hit the victim multiple times with a baseball bat, and he was taken to University Hospital in Newark with back injuries and later released, police said.

Police made no arrests the day of the fight. But the following morning, Collins, accompanied by his attorney, turned himself in, officials said. He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a weapon and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. Bail was set at $20,000 bond or $2,000 in cash.

HARRASSMENT

Two workers for a local carpet company were charged with harassment after they followed a young girl in a company van in the afternoon on April 3, police said.

According to investigators, Damon Foster, 30, of Montclair, and Rashawn Fagg, 28, of East Orange, were in a blue van when they started driving slowly alongside a 14-year-old girl walking on South Fullerton Avenue, trying to strike up a conversation with her. Carlucci said the chitchat consisted of small talk, and was not sexual in nature.

The girl conveyed disinterest, and the men seemed to drive away. But then, according to police, the girl encountered the van again, and this time the men had parked it along the route she was walking, waiting for the victim to catch up so they could resume their discussion.

The girl called police once she arrived home, and Foster and Fagg came to Police Headquarters and were charged with harassment and released, Carlucci said.

BOMB SCARE

Classes at Glenfield Middle School were dismissed early this past Tuesday, April 15, after a student found a note indicating a bomb had been planted in the Maple Avenue building, Principal Alex Anemone said.

A sixth-grader dropped his pen during class at around 1 p.m. and when he leaned over to pick it up, he saw a folded piece of paper taped to the bottom of his desk labeled, "Do not open."

When the student took down the note and unfolded it, he found a message scolding him for disobeying the warning and saying a bomb was inside the school.

He turned the note over to the teacher, who notified school administrators. School was dismissed at 1:50 p.m., about 20 minutes earlier than usual. Montclair police and firefighters, accompanied by officers from the Essex County Sheriff’s Department who brought their bomb-sniffing dogs, responded. After searching the building, authorities declared it "all clear" at 2:29 p.m., Anemone said.

According to a letter from the principal sent home to parents, "Although there was no evidence that this was anything more than an extremely inappropriate juvenile prank," school officials contacted authorities as a precaution.

"We are sorry if anyone was alarmed; however, in matters of safety, we will continue to err on the side of caution," Anemone added.

SHOPLIFTING

A teenaged girl set off the theft alarm at the South Park Street Urban Outfitters as she exited the store, and when an employee tried to detain her she ran away, police said.

The girl triggered the alarm on Friday, April 11 at 3:42 p.m., police said. When the employee told her to halt, the girl said she had to meet her friends and bolted with about $84 worth of merchandise, according to police.

The witness saw the girl enter the Starbucks at The Siena with a group of teenagers, but when police checked the café they didn’t find the group, police said.

The stolen items consisted of an Urban Renewal plaid knit dress, a necklace with a nautical theme and aviator sunglasses.

The witness told police the suspect was a thin black girl, around 15 or 16 years old, who had chin-length brown hair and was wearing blue face paint, a red T-shirt, blue jeans and a red book bag.

VANDALISM

* A man was arrested and charged with vandalism after, according to police, he wrote on the outer walls of buildings lining Church Street.

A property owner called the police after seeing Herbert Bendell, who is in his 50s and whose place of residence is unknown, write on one of the walls of Bean’s Choice Coffees/Teas in blue marker and then pocket the Sharpie he had used, police said.

* The Frog Hollow Neighborhood Association building on Talbot Street was vandalized between Friday, April 11 at 6:30 p.m. and the next day at noon, police said. A glass pane set in the door on the building’s eastern side was broken with an unknown weapon.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

A woman’s friend broke her SUV’s windshield in a rage when the victim came to The Office Beer, Bar and Grill on Bloomfield Avenue to pick her up Monday, April 14 at 1:20 a.m., police said.

Dejah Jones, 22, of Newark, had gotten into an argument at the bar and, out of frustration, punched the windshield while she was sitting in the passenger’s seat of her friend’s 2003 Jeep Liberty, according to police. After making a large crack in the glass, Jones exited the SUV and walked eastbound on Bloomfield Avenue, and her friend called police, authorities said.

Officers found Jones walking down the avenue between Maple Plaza and Park Street and arrested and charged her with criminal mischief, police said. Officers found she had a $500 outstanding warrant out of Clark.

DWI

Kevin Jamar Rembert, 31, of Passaic, was arrested and charged with driving while intoxicated and speeding on North Fullerton Avenue on Tuesday, April 8, at 5:50 a.m., police said.

An officer was stationed on Claremont Avenue that morning, facing east, monitoring cars’ speed with a radar gun when a Mercedes 500 going west came up the avenue at an excessive speed, police said. The officer turned around and pulled the car over on North Fullerton Avenue between Claremont Avenue and Munn Street, police said.

Rembert smelled of alcohol, his eyes were watery and speech was slurred, police said. He said he was going from Bloomfield back to Passaic, however police noted the driver was traveling away from Passaic, officials said.

After he failed field sobriety tests, Rembert was arrested and charged, police said, stating that his blood alcohol content was then found to be over the legal limit. Rembert later told police he had four vodka and cranberry drinks at a bar in Clifton the night before, between 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., according to police.

BURGLARY

A unit in an apartment building on Orange Road, near its intersection with Gates Avenue, was burglarized Wednesday, April 9, sometime between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., police said.

The suspect got into the apartment through a slightly open living room window. The burglar then went into the tenant’s 16-year-old son’s bedroom and stole three video games and two controllers, one with a cord and one without, for his Xbox game system. Also stolen was the boy’s iPod nano. The total value of all the stolen goods was over $400.

WARRANT

Police brought Vincent Odom, 31, of East Orange, who was being held in the East Orange Police Department lockup, to Montclair Police Headquarters on Wednesday, April 9, for an outstanding $1,000 warrant out of Montclair, police said.

— DAN PROCHILO