Brian Flanagan, the 47-year-old fire chief of Manchester Township's Ridgeway Volunteer Fire Company, was killed before dawn on Tuesday when a GMC SUV barreled through a marked construction zone on the New Jersey Turnpike and struck him. The crash happened around 3:52 a.m. on the southbound outer roadway near milepost 87.7 in Edison Township, where Flanagan was working as part of a roadway striping crew inside a two-lane closure.
According to a report by Daily Voice, State Police spokesman Christopher Postorino said the SUV entered the construction area and struck Flanagan before the driver fled the scene. Troopers later identified the driver as 40-year-old Anthony Bernardi of Edison, and as reported by Jersey Shore Online, troopers located and arrested him after he allegedly left the collision scene.
Bernardi now faces three felony charges stemming from the crash: aggravated manslaughter, vehicular homicide, and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. He is being held in Middlesex County jail pending a detention hearing, per the Daily Voice report. State Police say the crash remains under investigation, according to Postorino.
A Chief Remembered Across Ocean County
The Ridgeway Volunteer Fire Company mourned Flanagan in an official statement Tuesday, describing him as “a loving husband, father, uncle, friend, and brother to our fire company family” who devoted years to public service, according to Lakewood Alerts. The tribute reflected the depth of Flanagan's standing within the volunteer fire company and the broader Manchester Township community he served.
Manchester Township Police Chief Antonio Ellis also released a formal statement, noting that local police officers and emergency personnel had worked alongside Flanagan for years during emergency responses across Ocean County, per Shore News Network's reporting. That overlap between police and volunteer fire crews underscored how widely Flanagan's death was felt among the region's first responders.
This was not the first time Flanagan had faced a life-threatening crash in the line of duty. In November 2022, his department-issued Chevrolet Tahoe struck a utility pole on Ridgeway Road in Manchester Township while he was returning from a fire emergency call, the same Lakewood Alerts report noted. He survived that earlier collision.
Severe Prison Exposure Under New Jersey Law
The charges against Bernardi carry steep potential consequences under New Jersey statute. First-degree aggravated manslaughter under N.J.S.A. 2C:11-4 carries a potential state prison sentence of 10 to 30 years and falls under the No Early Release Act, which requires a convicted defendant to serve 85% of the sentence before becoming eligible for parole, according to Keith Oliver Criminal Law.
Separately, leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death is a second-degree felony under N.J.S.A. 2C:11-5.1 that carries 5 to 10 years in prison, and any sentence for that charge must run consecutively to, rather than concurrently with, a manslaughter conviction, per Aiello Harris Abate, Law Group PC. Second-degree vehicular homicide under N.J.S.A. 2C:11-5 adds a further penalty of 5 to 10 years in state prison and fines up to $150,000 upon conviction, according to Lustberg Law Offices. Taken together, the statutes mean Bernardi faces the possibility of decades behind bars if convicted on all three counts.
A Deadly Year on New Jersey's Roads
Flanagan's death adds to a grim national pattern for overnight road crews. Work-zone traffic fatalities nationwide increased by 45% between 2010 and 2024, claiming 850 lives in 2024 alone, according to the National Safety Council. The trend reflects the mounting danger faced by workers like Flanagan who labor on active highways after dark.
The crash also lands amid a difficult year on New Jersey's roadways more broadly. Unofficial fatality statistics compiled by the New Jersey State Police recorded 393 fatal crashes resulting in 409 traffic deaths across the state through mid-October, according to the agency's own tally. Flanagan's death now stands among those statistics, though for Manchester Township's fire company and the police and emergency crews who worked beside him for years, the loss is measured in far more personal terms.
