Why a North Bergen killer who served 17 years is going back to prison

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A 36-year-old North Bergen man who said he was a changed man after serving 17 years for aggravated manslaughter was convicted today of an aggravated assault he committed in Hoboken while on parole.

Following the verdict, Hudson County Superior Court Judge Patrick Arre revoked Fundador Bonet’s bail and the tearful Paterson Plank Road resident was handcuffed and led away to Hudson County jail to await his June 30 sentencing.

Bonet hung his head and slowly shook it from side to side after hearing the verdict following less than one day heated jury deliberations, during which arguing jurors could be heard through the jury room door.

Bonet faces up to five years in prison when Arre sentences him in the Hudson County Administration Building in Jersey City.

Man who served 17 years for Hoboken killing is back behind bars

Man who served 17 years for Hoboken killing is back behind bars

A former Hoboken resident who spent 17 years behind bars for killing a Jersey City man in 1999 is back behind bars after being charged with aggravated assault and firearm offenses connected to an incident in Hoboken on Oct. 9.

Bonet was in prison from June 17, 1999 to Aug. 29, 2014, for the aggravated manslaughter of Charles Mincey, who was 19 when Bonet fatally shot him outside a Hoboken public housing complex on Aug. 30, 1997. He had been in jail for two years awaiting trial.

Following the Aug. 9, 2015 aggravated assault, also in the Hoboken housing complex where Bonet grew up, he was charged with pointing a handgun at a man and beating him.

Bonet, who told The Jersey Journal in 2014 that he had changed, had found religion and hoped to put his life back together, was acquitted today of all counts other than aggravated assault. His co-defendant was acquitted of all charges.

During the trial, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor David Feldman alleged that Bonet lured his wife’s ex-lover to the housing complex to assault him in the 2015 attack.

In 2014, Bonet was paroled to a residence in North Bergen. In an interview with The Jersey Journal at the home, he was contrite and tearful.

“I wish there was something I could do to make them feel better,” Bonet said of Mincey’s family. “There is nothing I can do to take anything back. I was wrong. If I could give my life to make their son, their brother come back, but I can’t. I really can’t.”

On Aug. 30, 1997, Mincey was among a group of young men from Jersey City who went into the housing complex on Harrison Street to visit some girls. As they were getting into their car to leave, Bonet — who was with a group of Hoboken teens — fired a shot at the car, killing Mincey.

Bonet said he was an ignorant child when he committed the crime.

“That child died a long time ago in prison,” Bonet told The Jersey Journal in 2014. “I’m really religious now. I try to keep to my religion and follow it to the best of my ability. I was not an angel and I may never be an angel, but I hope for the best.

“I wish I could sit down and talk to myself back then and try to get myself to open my eyes before he did what he did.”