No prison for owner of 37 guns found in NJ hospital office closet

🏥 37 guns were found in NJ hospital closet

🏥 Owner of the guns will avoid prison time

🏥 Hospital was fined $63K for safety plan violations

SECAUCUS — A year after police responding to a fake bomb threat uncovered a cache of more than three dozen firearms in a hospital office closet, a former executive will avoid prison time.

Reuven Alonalayoff, of Elmwood Park, was arrested weeks after the alarming discovery.

The 47-year-old Alonalayoff — who subsequently lost his job as marketing director for Hudson Regional Hospital — has now entered a pre-trial intervention program for one year.

“The unsecured storage of a large cache of weaponry, especially in this location, certainly creates a risk to public safety,” Secaucus Police Chief Miller said at the time of the arrest.

Law enforcement recovered the following weapons from an unlocked closet within an office under keycode in July 2022:

◾ 27 rifles/shotguns
◾ 11 handguns of various calibers
◾ 1 Kriss Vector .45 caliber semi-automatic rifle with high-capacity magazine
◾ A 14-round high-capacity handgun magazine

“After reviewing the charges filed by the Secaucus Police Department regarding this matter, the State determined the weapon did not meet the statutory definition of an assault rifle,” according to a spokesperson for the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday.

Read More: New police video shows dozens of guns found at NJ hospital 

New Jersey has banned possession of firearm magazines able to hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, with “limited exceptions,” since 2018.

The stringent law sparked a legal battle, as the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs filed a lawsuit that remains unresolved.

Alonalayoff was arrested in August 2022 at Newark Liberty International Airport returning from an "extended medical trip" to Israel, as previously reported by ABC 7 Eyewitness News.

Hospital fined for failing to report bomb threat

Hudson Regional Hospital was later fined $63,000 by the state Department of Health, which found the facility had failed to maintain a violence prevention plan.

Those penalties were largely $1,000 a day from July into early September 2022 — between the weapons being left in the closet in a locked office, until hospital security staff were given updated safety policies.

Another $2,000 penalty was issued for hospital administrators failing to report both the initial bomb threat and the discovery of 37 firearms to the state.

A different staffer previously told police that the hospital’s owner, Yan Moshe, was aware of the firearms being stored in the closet, as reported by Politico, which cited a police report.

Mosche, a real estate developer, bought the hospital in 2018, according to the Health Professionals and Allied Employees union.

In August 2022, Hudson County View shared body camera footage from the weapons discovery, which shows officers laying out the dozens of guns on a conference room table.

Report a correction 👈 | 👉 Contact our newsroom