A 35-year-old man was extradited from Colombia on Wednesday for the October 2020 murder of a 40-year-old Bayonne woman, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez announced.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
Erick Acosta, 35, of Bayonne, is charged with murder, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of a weapon, and tampering with evidence.
He was taken into custody at Newark Liberty International Airport and is being held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility pending his first court appearance.
Colombian authorities arrested Acosta on October 22, 2022, pursuant to a U.S. provisional arrest request. Then on Wednesday, April 10th, Acosta was subsequently extradited from Colombia to the United States.
On October 9th, 2020, shortly before 1 p.m., members of the Bayonne Police Department responded to 30 Lord Ave. to perform a welfare check of a resident. Upon arrival, responding officers found an unresponsive female victim with visible trauma.
The victim, later identified as Crystal Ojeda, 40, of Bayonne, was pronounced dead at approximately 1:55 p.m.
The Regional Medical Examiner’s Office determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head and body and the manner of death to be homicide.
The HCPO initially issued the aforementioned charges one week after Ojeda was killed and issued a public appeal to help locate Acosta.
Suarez credited the HCPO Homicide Unit, U.S. Marshals Service, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, with the investigation, and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section’s Judicial Attaché’s Office in Bogota, Colombia, who worked with Colombian authorities to secure the arrest and extradition of Acosta.
