He’s Accused of Killing Two Teen Girls With His Jeep. He Kept Livestreaming Anyway Because It Paid.
It was just after 5:30 p.m. on September 29, 2025, on Burnside Avenue in Cranford, New Jersey. Maria Niotis and Isabella Salas, both 17 and best friends, were riding e-bikes home when a black Jeep Compass made a U-turn, accelerated to roughly 70 mph in the 25 mph zone, and struck them, according to Union County prosecutors. Both girls were pronounced dead at area hospitals. The driver abandoned the Jeep and ran on foot — and when police caught up with him hours later, he said he’d been carjacked by a masked stranger. His own dashcam told a different story.
That driver, prosecutors say, was Vincent Battiloro — then 17, a Garwood neighbor who investigators say had been stalking Niotis. He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. He was also, according to his own YouTube channel, back online less than 24 hours later: hosting a 22-minute video-game livestream in which he offered his “sincerest condolences” exactly twice, then explained on camera that the flood of outraged comments was making him money. “The more you guys engage in the chat, the more you give me engagement,” he told viewers, “and I get paid for YouTube.”
Battiloro, now 18, was waived to adult court on June 26, 2026, and faces trial on both murder counts. He has entered no plea and is presumed innocent. But the case has opened a second line of scrutiny that has nothing to do with his guilt or innocence: police records described by the victims’ family and by a retired Cranford police chief show officers fielded at least six separate warnings — two hoax SWAT calls at the Niotis home, a sought restraining order, and four calls from Battiloro’s own parents — in the weeks before two 17-year-olds ended up dead.
- 70 mph — the speed prosecutors say Battiloro was driving in the 25 mph zone on Burnside Avenue when he struck Niotis and Salas · Source: NJ 101.5, CBS New York, Fox News
- 4 calls — times Battiloro's own parents contacted Cranford police about his escalating, physical behavior in the three weeks before the killings · Source: Law & Crime, NJ 101.5
- 2 swattings — hoax emergency calls to the Niotis family home between Sept. 1–15, 2025, that the family's attorney attributes to Battiloro · Source: Fox News, NJ 101.5
- 22 minutes — length of the YouTube livestream Battiloro hosted playing a video game less than a day after the killings · Source: NJ 101.5
- 31 years — consecutive years Democrats have held every seat on the Union County Board of County Commissioners overseeing the prosecutor in this case, dating to 1995 · Source: Union News Daily
Cranford police were called to Burnside Avenue around 5:30 p.m. on a Monday for a report that two teenage girls had been struck by a vehicle while riding an e-bike. According to prosecutors, detectives later obtained dashcam video from inside Battiloro’s own Jeep that showed him park near the Niotis family’s block, watch the girls ride past in the opposite direction, then make a U-turn and accelerate directly at them — striking both at high speed before the vehicle came to a stop. He then fled the scene on foot, leaving the Jeep behind.
When Cranford officers caught up with Battiloro that evening, he had an explanation ready: he said he had been carjacked earlier that day by an unknown man in a red mask, armed with a knife, who took the Jeep before the crash. Detectives checked that story against the dashcam footage from the very vehicle he claimed had been stolen from him. It did not show a carjacking. It showed him driving.
Because Battiloro was 17 at the time, the case moved first through New Jersey’s juvenile system — and through an unusual sequence of custody. Officers detained him the night of the crash, then released him “pending further investigation,” according to multiple news accounts, before rearresting him two days later and filing two counts of first-degree murder on October 1, 2025. For the next nine months, his identity was legally sealed under New Jersey’s juvenile confidentiality rules, even as the case drew statewide attention.
On June 26, 2026, Union County Prosecutor William A. Daniel (D) and Cranford Police Chief Matthew Nazzaro announced what the victims’ families had been requesting since the crash: a judge had approved waiving Battiloro to adult court, where he would be tried — and named publicly — for the first time. He appeared by video for a brief hearing on July 1, under three minutes according to NJ 101.5’s courtroom account, during which he waived his right to a detention hearing, agreed to remain in custody, answered the judge only in monosyllables, and “showed no emotional reaction.” A post-indictment arraignment is scheduled for July 20.
'He should've been charged that night': Ex-chief slams Cranford teen murder case.
What happened next is the detail that turned a local hit-and-run into national news. Less than 24 hours after Maria Niotis and Isabella Salas died, Battiloro was back on YouTube — not to answer investigators, but to play a video game. Streaming under his channel handle, he spent roughly 22 minutes hosting a Major League Baseball simulation with a friend while more than 200 viewers, many of them furious, filled his chat. He addressed them directly.
“The more you guys engage in the chat, the more you give me engagement and I get paid for YouTube.”
Vincent Battiloro · YouTube livestream · September 30, 2025
He offered his “sincerest condolences” to “those two girls” exactly twice during the stream, then pivoted to casting himself as the victim — “the amount of bullying that I’ve been put through in the past has been absolutely absurd,” he said, tying his own conduct to what he called a broader mental-health crisis the state wasn’t addressing. Viewers were not persuaded. “Bro you killed my best friend you animal,” one commenter wrote; another summed up the whole stream in one line: “Stream after incident, check. Mourn the death of 2 innocent people, nope.” The clip has since been viewed more than 150,000 times, and prosecutors have pointed to it — alongside the earlier swatting calls — as evidence of a pattern rather than a single bad night.
Niotis family attorney Brent Bramnick says the family had been warning police since March. “They reach out to the police department, they give them information, they give formal statements,” he told NJ 101.5. Between September 1 and 15, 2025, Bramnick says, Battiloro was behind two hoax “swatting” calls that sent armed officers to the Niotis home — a claim investigators have not publicly confirmed. Relatives have also said Maria had sought a restraining order against him.
Battiloro’s own parents called police too — four times in the three weeks before the crash, according to records described to Law & Crime. His father called a non-emergency line on August 9 to ask for advice on “juvenile issues.” On August 24 he called again: “He sprayed me in the face with mace. He took my car.” On August 26, Battiloro’s mother called, worried he was “wandering the street” after being put out of the house. On August 30, his father called once more: “He’s getting physical.” During a second SWAT hoax at the Niotis home, officers reportedly found Battiloro parked in his car on the family’s street — and Maria’s mother identified him to police as the boy harassing her daughter. Rather than arrest him, officers released him to a car driven by his father, who drove away.
Ryan Greco, Cranford’s police chief until his 2024 retirement, told NJ 101.5 that the department had more than enough on September 29 alone to make an immediate arrest: “There was a fabricated carjacking claim, a fatal motor vehicle crash, prior history with one of the victims, and two deceased high school girls.” Letting Battiloro go home that night, Greco said, risked destroyed evidence — and the next day, he livestreamed a video that “essentially re-victimized the families.”
The department that released Battiloro to his father, and the prosecutor’s office that ultimately charged him, both sit inside a jurisdiction with an unbroken one-party government. Cranford’s Township Committee has a Democratic majority; Mayor Kathleen Miller Prunty (D) leads the town that appointed Chief Nazzaro. Union County Prosecutor William A. Daniel (D) was nominated to the post in 2021 by Governor Phil Murphy (D) and confirmed by the Democrat-controlled State Senate Judiciary Committee. The county government both officials answer to, the Union County Board of County Commissioners, has been held entirely by Democrats for 31 consecutive years — Republicans have not won a countywide race in Union County since 1995.
Chief Nazzaro has so far declined to answer questions about whether his department mishandled the case, telling residents at a township meeting that speculating on social media was “unhelpful” while the investigation continued. Westfield Police Chief Christopher Battiloro — the suspect’s uncle, whose statement about the case drew scrutiny because of the family connection — released his own statement distancing himself: “While social media has made it known that the accused is related to me, he is not my son and not a member of my immediate family... I do unequivocally condemn the actions of the accused.”
Every official positioned to have intervened before September 29, 2025 — the Cranford Township Committee that oversees the police department, the Union County Prosecutor who ultimately filed the charges, and the county commissioner board that funds both — answers to a single party that has not lost a countywide Union County race in three decades.
That does not, by itself, establish fault in any individual officer’s decision on September 29. It does mean the officials now facing questions about the two SWAT calls, the four parental 911 calls, and the decision to release a stalking suspect to his father rather than arrest him are the same officials Union County voters have kept in office, term after term, for a generation.
UPDATE: Two girls in Cranford, New Jersey, were struck and killed while riding e-bikes Monday evening. Relatives and friends of the victims say the teens knew the alleged driver. @NickJCaloway reports.
Battiloro’s post-indictment arraignment is scheduled for July 20 in Superior Court, where he is expected to enter a plea for the first time. Each first-degree murder count carries the possibility of a sentence of up to life in prison if he is convicted. Nothing about that outcome is decided. The evidence prosecutors have described publicly so far — the dashcam footage, the disputed carjacking story, the swatting calls, the livestream — is the state’s account, not a verdict.
Vincent Battiloro has been charged, not convicted. He has entered no plea in Superior Court and is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The dashcam footage, the swatting allegations, and the account of his release to his father during the second SWAT call are drawn from prosecutors’ public statements and reporting attributed to the victims’ family — not from this site’s own investigation, and not from any court finding.
The families of Maria Niotis and Isabella Salas, the two girls killed in Cranford, N.J., earlier this week, are demanding justice.
Whatever a jury eventually decides about Vincent Battiloro, the record of contacts before September 29 — two swatting calls, a restraining-order request, four calls from his own parents describing violence and instability, and a second encounter that ended with police handing him to his father instead of a pair of handcuffs — is not in dispute. Two 17-year-olds who were, by every account, just riding bikes home are dead. The system built to catch a documented risk before that happened did not.
