All Bright, College-Bound Kids Caught Up In Violence Plaguing The City
Newark Mayor Cory Booker is in a street fight with Black-on-Black crime in his city. With 60 murders this year alone, the brother's losing!
Forced to kneel against a wall behind an elementary school in New Jersey, three friends were shot to death at close range, and a fourth was found about 30 feet away with gunshot and knife wounds to her head, police said.
Natasha Aerial, 19, was listed in fair condition at Newark's University Hospital, authorities said. Police identified her companions as her brother, Terrance Aerial, 18, Ofemi Hightower, 20, and Deshawn Harvey, 20.
All were from Newark; and all would soon either start or resume their lives away from the violent city at a college hundreds of miles away.
Ofemi had been accepted Thursday to Delaware State University after two years of rejection letters. Terrance was a business major there and an ordained minister, while his sister Natasha was to depart for Dover after the weekend to return to summer classes and a job at a Subway sandwich shop. Deshawn was also due back at the university this week for his job in the school's administration building.
The killings brought the number of homicides in the predominantly Black city of less than 300,000 residents this year to 60, compared with 63 for the same time last year. The spate of gun violence has residents criticising Mayor Booker and the police department.
"They are not keeping us safe. It's appalling that [Booker] will allow bodies to keep falling on the streets of Newark," said Donna Jackson, president of campaign group Take Back Our Streets.
Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow said authorities didn't have any suspects or a motive in the killings late Saturday. None of the victims had any criminal record, she said. "They were good kids," Dow said.
The four had been listening to music in a parking lot behind Mount Vernon School at around 11:30 p.m. when they were gradually joined by a group of men, authorities said.
Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy said the four exchanged text messages saying they should leave, but were attacked before they could do so. These messages may hold the key to what actually took place.
Police said the attackers shot one young woman, then forced her three companions down an alley, lined them up against a wall, made them kneel and shot each in the head.
The Aerials' mother, Renee Tucker, said the last time she saw them was around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, when they told her they were going around the corner to get something to eat.
"They said they were going to come right back to the house," Tucker said.
Instead, sirens raced through her Vailsburg neighborhood just before midnight, because someone heard gunshots and screams behind the school and called police.
Carlos Holmes, a spokesman for the university, said Natasha Aerial and Harvey were to be juniors this year. He had little or no information on the other two, other than someone with a name spelled similarly to Hightower's had been rejected by the school several times in the last few years.
Authorities also reported a fourth homicide in the city Sunday morning, also in the Vailsburg section. Detectives believe the shooting death of Quintez Waller on Smith Street was in retaliation for a shooting hours earlier up the block.
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