Jersey City

NJ Firefighters Respond to Crash, Find Colleague Dying in Back Seat

When Jersey City firefighters responded to a call about a head-on collision overnight, they had no idea they’d find one of their own, unresponsive, in the back seat of one of the vehicles.

Firefighter Matthew Nierstedt was off duty when he was killed in the crash at about 2 a.m. Thursday on Paterson Plank Road, according to authorities.

When colleagues pulled Nierstedt from the car, some rode with him in the ambulance and gave him CPR along the way. Fire Chief Steven McGill said he even called the department chaplain to read last rites and console the man’s family at the hospital bed at Jersey City Medical Center.

“I was there the whole time when the parents came in,” McGill said. “It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

Nierstedt had been a Jersey City firefighter for about a year, McGill said. Before that, he served four years in the Navy.

"He was a good fireman, he was up and coming,” McGill said.

He also comes from a family of community servants: His father is a retired department chief with the Jersey City Police Department, and his mother is a trauma nurse at Jersey City Medical Center.

Police haven’t released any further details about the crash, which also left two of Nierstedt’s friends in the front seats and two occupants in the other vehicle with injuries.

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