Page 6 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • May 20, 2009 Glen Rock Borough student struck and killed by train by John Koster Glen Rock residents, students, and school officials were saddened by the death of a quiet, likable student whose accidental death on May 9 cast a pall over the high school and led to offers of counseling and the cancellation of a Friday night dance. Nicholas Bischoff, a 17-year-old student at Glen Rock High School, was struck and killed instantly by a New Jersey Transit train at about 8:50 p.m. when he reportedly stepped in front of the train while walking home from his job at Kilroy’s on Rock Road. Coworkers said Bischoff was friendly, polite, and a hard and willing worker who sometimes asked for more work when his assignments were completed. He had many friends and got along well both with his peers and adults. Residents were mystified as to how Bischoff could have been hit by a train when the noise and vibration should have given ample warning, but discounted suicide as an explanation. “He was a quiet kid but he had friends and he was very likable,” said one resident. “I’ve known a couple of suicides and he didn’t fit the picture at all. He was in good mental health from what I could see. It was just a tragedy.” Bischoff was killed when he stepped onto the tracks about a half-mile from the Harristown Road crossing. The engineer sounded his horn and tried to brake, but the train could not be stopped in time. Police said there was no suicide note and that it was unclear why Bischoff was on the tracks. People who knew him said he sometimes wore a headset to listen to music, which could have masked the sound of the train. He was a bass guitar player who loved to listen to music and to perform. Students frequently walk along the tracks as a shortcut from one part of the borough to another. The tracks, however, have claimed a number of lives, including an older motorist who rolled her car onto the tracks, and a man who fell asleep on the tracks. The school system reacted supportively to Bischoff’s death by offering counseling sessions for grief-stricken students. Police receive gift for surveillance The Glen Rock Police Department recently received a gift valued at $4,500 for the extraction of information from cellular telephones and other personal electronics including text messages, and videos, said to be able to recover 95 percent of the information stored in these devices. The Universal Forensic Extraction Device was donated by a local firm, Cellebrite USA Corp., through the company’s chief executive officer, Adi Ofrat, by way of thanking the police for their protection of residents and businesses in Glen Rock. The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and Ridgewood already have the technology, but Glen Rock would not have purchased it, said Glen Rock Police Chief Steven Cherry, and the donation was a valuable contribution to the borough’s inventory of technology. J. KOSTER Tea and talk at the Glen Rock Library The Glen Rock Library’s afternoon book discussion group, Tea @ 2 on Tuesday,” meets on the third Tuesday of each month. The group is open to the general public, and will meet and enjoy “tea and” in the Reading Room. “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishikura will be discussed on Tuesday, May 19. Unlike the two evening discussion groups that focus on books with certain themes, the tea-time discussion is free-wheeling. Previous selections have been “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini and “The Spellman Files” by Lisa Lutz. The tea is hot in the winter and iced in the summer. The library is located at 315 Rock Road. 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