Vincent Battiloro, an 18-year-old Cranford, New Jersey man now charged with two counts of first-degree murder, became the story not only for what prosecutors allege he did on September 29, 2025 — deliberately striking teen girls Maria Niotis and Isabella Salas with a Jeep Compass as they rode electric bikes — but for what he did the following day: he opened a YouTube gaming stream and explained, without apparent embarrassment, how his viewers' outrage was generating revenue. His case was transferred to adult court on June 26, and the attorney representing one victim's family says a separate thread of questions about alleged swatting incidents in the weeks before the killings has yet to be answered.
The Alleged Attack on Burnside Avenue
Prosecutors say Battiloro's own dash camera recorded the sequence. The footage shows him entering a Jeep Compass on September 29, driving to the area of Burnside Avenue in Cranford near the home of one of the victims, and parking. When Niotis and Salas appeared on electric bikes moving in the opposite direction, Battiloro made a U-turn, accelerated toward them, and struck both girls at high speed. He then fled the scene on foot, according to detectives. Both victims were 17 years old.
The Livestream
One day after the alleged killings, Battiloro appeared on a YouTube gaming stream and treated the wave of comments about the deaths as a monetization tutorial. "The more you guys engage in the chat, the more you give me engagement and I get paid for YouTube," he told his audience. "Just letting you all know. That's fine. Y'all are just giving me engagement, that's fine." When the comments persisted, he briefly offered condolences, calling the events a "tragic accident" and promising a fuller account once he was "authorized to talk about the whole thing."
Adult Court, and Questions About What Came Before
Battiloro was a minor at the time of the alleged crime, which had kept his identity from public disclosure. The transfer to adult court on June 26 changed that. Brent Bramnick, the attorney representing the Niotis family, called the move "a welcomed sliver of justice" and credited the prosecutor's office and the broader community for sustaining attention on the victims. But Bramnick's own investigation has surfaced a prior sequence: Battiloro allegedly swatted the Niotis family's Cranford home twice between September 1 and September 15 — weeks before the girls were killed. Bramnick said the family wants to know what investigation, if any, followed those reports, and what information police had in their possession before the attack.
The argument distilled itself on that gaming stream: two teenagers were dead, a suspect was alive and calculating ad revenue, and the gap between those two facts is what prosecutors will now take to adult court.