Overview
- Coutinho, 56, was in a two-car crash on Newark’s McCarter Highway on Sunday and suffered a fatal heart attack at the scene.
- Police said the collision happened around 7:30 a.m. at McCarter Highway and South Street, and the other driver is expected to survive.
- Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Sen. Cory Booker, Gov. Phil Murphy, and the Ironbound Soccer Club praised his service to the city and its Portuguese community.
- He served in the New Jersey Assembly in 1997 and from 2008 to 2013, then left office after a $32,500 embezzlement case that led to probation and a bar on holding elected office.
- He helped grow youth soccer as co-founder of the Ironbound Soccer Club and as a 2021 New Jersey Soccer Association Hall of Fame inductee, and Murphy pardoned him in early 2026.