Carjacking Victim Belonged to Hoboken Running Club

Dustin Friedland, the 30-year-old Hoboken man who was shot and killed during a carjacking Sunday night at the Mall at Short Hills, was a member of the Hoboken Harriers Running Club, according to his Facebook page.

Members of the local club, which was founded in 1988 and holds runs six days per week, shared their condolences on the group's Facebook page Monday.

"Absolutely horrible," HOHA member Bob Smyth wrote. "I remember his first night on the Monday run. We ran together. I'm having a hard time believing this."

Long-time HOHA member Frank Magaletta, who also had run with Friedland, said the young patent attorney had just recently joined the club, according to the Star-Ledger.

“He had not raced. He was gearing up to get fit,” Magaletta, who said he knows most of the club's runners, told the paper.

According to Magaletta, Friedland frequented the Thursday night run and often socialized with other HOHA members afterward at a local watering hole like Moran's Pub.

"Even though he was a relatively new member, he fit right in,” Magaletta told the paper.

Joe DeFlora, who said he'd ran with Friedland a half-dozen or so times, called the news "so upsetting."

"He was such a nice guy," DeFlora wrote on the Harriers' Facebook Page. "He and his wife were only married a short time. She must be devastated."

Friedland's wife, Jamie, had been shopping with her husband at the mall Sunday night and witnessed the shooting, but was not injured, the Essex County Prosecutor's Office said in a statement.

The couple, who attended Syracuse University College of Law together, were married in the fall of 2011 and had just purchased a home on Park Avenue in Hoboken this October, the New York Post reported.

The investigation into the murder is ongoing and the Essex County Crime Stopper's Program is offering a $10,000 reward for any information on the case.

Tipsters can call the Essex County Prosecutor's Office Homicide/Major Crimes Task Force line at 1-877-847-7432.