Local news reports
When they sped to a quiet neighborhood of well-trimmed lawns on a recent Friday morning after a 911 call, Saddle Brook police figured they were about to confront an angry wife who had reportedly stabbed her husband.
What the police encountered now appears to have evolved into a constitutional debate over privacy and gun rights.
Sometimes small local disputes can touch on deep, divisive national debates. That seems to be the legacy of a husband-wife quarrel between Robert and Eileen Lintner at their home on Washington Street in Saddle Brook.
Police say that just after 9 a.m. on Aug. 8, they received a report that Eileen, 64, had stabbed her 65-year-old husband in the neck. Robert Lintner’s wound was not fatal — he was treated at Hackensack University Medical Center and released.
Eileen Lintner was charged with second-degree aggravated assault and illegal possession of a weapon — a knife. But as they typically do in domestic disputes, police separated the husband and wife for questioning. Then, in what police say is also standard procedure in such cases, they asked the Lintners, “Do you have any firearms in the house?”
Robert Lintner had almost 200 guns, most of them locked in steel vaults, police said. And he refused their request to enter the house and examine the weapons, for which the police say he had proper owner’s permits.
