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Sometimes the most unlikely people lead us into difficult places. Such is the role of Bennie Eugene Bridges, a Central Jersey man who lost his cool three decades ago and decided to eek out some measure of revenge.
Around midnight on a night in September 1988. Bridges found himself in the basement of a home in Roebling, New Jersey for the Sweet Sixteen birthday party of a girl named Cindy.
Bridges got into an argument with a guy named Andy, then stormed out, threatening to return with his “boys.”
He wasn’t through, however. Court records show that Bridges elevated his threat by using a virulent racial epithet that evokes centuries of bigotry and violence against African Americans. As Bridges drove away from the house in his car, he yelled out the window that he was “going back to Trenton to get my (racial epithet)s.”