The Trenton native, just 29 years old, was killed on the morning of May 7, 1984, in a fierce gun battle on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Negron Drive, just off Klockner Road in Hamilton, is not large or imposing as roadways go. But its significance in the hearts of New Jersey residents is huge.
In a solemn ceremony earlier this month, Hamilton Mayor Kelly Yaede took her place beside representatives of the New Jersey State Police and a police survivors group to formally dedicate the street in memory of Trooper Carlos Negron.
The Trenton native, just 29 years old, was killed on the morning of May 7, 1984, in a fierce gun battle on the New Jersey Turnpike. He was shot three times in the chest and once in the rib cage.
The two suspects died half an hour later when the van they had stolen at gunpoint crashed into a utility pole.
"The murder of Trooper Negron was a despicable, cowardly act," Gov. Tom Kean said at a news conference later that day. "It was an attack on every individual in this state."
Negron Drive, named in 2005, is home to the state police's Troop C headquarters, as well as to the New Jersey Forensic Science Technology Center.
The ceremony making the name official was a grim reminder that the men and women who serve in the state police are in constant peril. Their families live with that reality, day in and day out.
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Michelle Carroll was a 24-year-old newlywed of six weeks when her husband, Trooper William C. Carroll, Jr., was struck by a tractor-trailer on the turnpike in South Brunswick.
His death followed that of Trooper Negron's by a scant 66 days.
"I'm very pleased even after 31 years, the New Jersey State Police do not forget their fallen troopers," Michelle Carroll said at the dedication.
The Monmouth County woman is co-founder and president of the Survivors of the Triangle New Jersey chapter, an organization that works to help families of police officers who have been killed in the line of duty.
She also chairs the Negron-Carroll Scholarship Fund, a nonprofit established to assist the college-bound children of police officers; it has served 84 students to date.
Since Negron's death three decades ago, 14 state troopers have died while on duty. Just last May, State Trooper Anthony Raspa joined their ranks, killed when his patrol car struck a deer on Interstate 195 in Upper Freehold.
Raspa had been on the job for a year and a half. Thousands of local, county and state police, some from as far away as California, gathered to pay their respects.
Our debt to those who serve is incalculable. It begins with remembering, as the ceremony on Negron Drive did so eloquently.