A New Jersey state grand jury has declined to indict a police officer who shot and killed a 68-year-old woman advancing toward him with a 12-inch knife — a rare moment where the justice system acknowledged that cops have a right to go home alive.
Officer Josue Plaza of the New Brunswick Police Department fired his weapon at Deborah Terrell on Aug. 8, 2025, after she walked toward officers while armed, according to NJ.com. The grand jury reached its decision Monday after reviewing the evidence.
Here is what actually happened, according to body camera footage and 911 recordings released by the Attorney General's Office: Police were first called to the Neilson Street apartment building around 4 a.m. for a woman disturbing residents. Terrell refused to speak with officers or open her door. They left.
Police were called back at 7:32 a.m. A 911 caller reported Terrell was walking in and out of her apartment with a large knife, threatening neighbors, and trying to slide the blade under a neighbor's door. This was the second such episode that morning, the caller said.
When officers arrived, Terrell answered the door holding a long knife, then quickly shut it as police told her to drop the weapon. For roughly eight minutes, officers tried to talk her into the hallway. She yelled from inside and slid the knife back and forth under the door.
When Terrell finally opened the door — still holding the knife — officers deployed pepper spray and a Taser. She turned back briefly, then advanced toward the officers anyway. The body cam footage shows her being shot twice.
A 12-inch knife was recovered at the scene.
After the shooting, family members and residents pressed officials with heated questions, saying Terrell suffered from a disability. That detail matters — and it's a tragedy. But a disability does not make a blade less sharp or a charging suspect less dangerous. Officers had already tried less-lethal options. The pepper spray and Taser didn't stop her.
NJ.com framed the story straight, laying out the timeline and evidence. But watch for the activist framing to follow: the implication that a 68-year-old with a knife is somehow not a lethal threat, that officers should have done more, that the grand jury got it wrong.
Under a 2019 New Jersey law, the Attorney General's Office must investigate every death during a police encounter and present findings to a grand jury. That process ran its course here. Now investigators will decide whether Plaza should face an administrative review — a separate track that could still punish the officer even after the criminal system cleared him.
That's the open question: whether a clean bill from a grand jury actually means the end of it, or whether the administrative machinery will deliver a different kind of verdict.
