Edison police charge van driver with leaving disabled person in vehicle overnight

By Alvin Wu
Domestic Affairs
Edison police charge van driver with leaving disabled person in vehicle overnight

Emblems of the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office and Edison Police Department, the law enforcement agencies investigating this case. MCPO, EPD/Emblems

EDISON, N.J., Jan. 13 (ZFJ) — Winnie Raini, 53, of Edison, has been charged with leaving an adult female with a developmental disability in a van overnight while employed as a private transportation driver, announced Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone and Chief Thomas Bryan of the Edison Police Department.

Authorities began investigating allegations of neglect on Jan. 3, according to the criminal complaint against Raini.

According to the aide for the developmentally delayed female, the woman is transported by van back to her residence twice a week. On Jan. 2, the woman was put in the van, which was being driven by Raini, at about 15:00. In the early morning on Jan. 3, the woman was discovered to have not arrived at her residence, so the aide notified her supervisor.

The supervisor told police that she was advised on Jan. 3 that the woman had not returned, so she called the transport company’s owners, who advised her that the woman was located in their van in Edison.

A transport company co-owner told police that Raini is the assigned driver for the woman and that he called the driver on Jan. 3 between 07:00 and 08:00 to ask where the woman was. He said that he heard Raini enter the vehicle, begin crying and screaming, and say that the woman was in the van in Edison where she’d been left since the previous afternoon.

Police say in the affidavit of probable cause that the woman was left alone in the van for about 16 hours.

Raini was charged with second-degree endangering another person and third-degree neglect of a disabled person. She has been suspended from her job at Inspiring NJ Transportation LLC.

The investigation is continuing, and anyone with information is asked to call Detective Daniela Castro of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit at (732) 745-3652 or Detective Christian Paone of the Edison Police Department at (732) 259-6943.

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