The rest of August: bloody nights in Newark

Newark had a bloody last few weeks, with three vicious shootings adding to the rapidly climbing list of Brick City homicide victims. It started off on August 15, when Jihad Springer, 21, was killed with a single gunshot to the chest a few blocks from Downtown Newark, and left for dead on the street. While Springer’s death was portrayed in the media as the average murder in Newark, the killing two days later garnered massive press attention.

Early in the morning hours of August 17, 14-year-old Keith Calhoun was hanging out with his friends on a corner on 12th and 7th, all members of the Bloods. While they were congregated, two men approached them, beginning to argue with them over a girl. It was allegedly Isiah Hemphill, 18, another Blood, who pulled out a handgun and fired into the group of youths, striking Calhoun in the back and killing him.

The press coverage was heavy, with Newark Mayor Cory Booker making statements saying he was going to clamp down on crime, and articles about the lives of both boys involved, and their families. The next week, after Albert Allen, 24, was murdered in South Ward, police began to make extensive arrests, confiscating pistols, three pounds of weed, cash, and a Mac-10 submachine gun. However, their arrests seemed to be out of coincidences – running across an armed robbery, being in the right place at the right time and witnessing a gangland gun battle – and three pounds of weed and several firearms is only the top of the surface in Newark.

Also, not too far outside of Newark, a robbery in Kearny ended tragically August 18, when two armed robbers burst into Rachel Jewelers in Kearny and murdered the proprietor in front of his children. The suspects fired a killing shot into 48-year-old Xavier Egoavil’s forehead after riddling his body with bullets, and fled the scene, scarring the peaceful town of Kearny with the brutal violence of the crime. Though towns like Kearny, Belleville and Maplewood seem suburban on the outside, it’s just reality that the violence and crime of Newark is only a town away.

Down in Middlesex County, there were reports of a homicide victim found in Cheesequake State Park on August 15, but the Star-Ledger provided no details of the victim. It’s frustrating when the media makes mention of such crimes, and then offers no follow-up; nevertheless, this unidentified victim is still added to the list of victims of homicide in New Jersey.

A few miles north in the Fords section of Woodbridge, intruders burst into a house perpetrating a horrifying double shooting, leaving 29-year-old Angel Vasquez dead, and his sister injured with multiple gunshot wounds. Angel Torres of Perth Amboy, 35, and two 17-year-old minors were arrested and charged in the homicide.

The last two murders this post will cover are the shooting of a 17-year-old young man in the broad daylight of the afternoon in Camden, and the strangling death of a 4-year-old girl by her mother in their house outside Morristown. One is incredibly common – Joshua Rosa is hardly the first teenager to die by the gun in Camden – and the other is not. Mary Gonzalez is Morris County’s first homicide of 2009, the year halfway over. Jenny Erazo-Rodriguez, 33, was arrested and charged in her daughter’s murder, and with the attempted murder of another of her children. It’s unlikely that Joshua Rosa’s killer will ever be brought to justice.