Getaway driver Anthony Marks said Thursday at the murder trial of two friends that he warned one of the suspected killers not to pull the trigger as they drove down the highway in the capital city four years ago.
Murder victim Daquan Dowling
Marks said that when best friend William “Bill Bill” Mitchell announced to the car he planned to light up a white Ford Taurus carrying a rival along Route 29, Marks responded: “No don’t do it. Not right here.”
Mitchell did it anyway, Marks said, after his co-defendant, Andre Romero, opened fire first that fateful day in January 2012.
Twenty-three-year-old Daquan Dowling was struck in the head in a hail of bullets, while the suspected killers gunned for his passenger, Morris Satchel.Read more
A reputed Bloods gangster who is already serving an 18-year sentence for executing an ex-con who was ready to testify against another gangster could spent another quarter century behind bars if he accepts the rap killing another city man.
Mayleek McInnis
Mayleek McInnis is imprisoned for the aggravated manslaughter of fellow gangster Shawn Travis, who was shot in the head on April Fools’ Day in 2008.
Now prosecutors want him to spend 25 years in prison for the 2005 shooting death of Omar Murphy, who was gunned down near the intersection of Stuyvesant and Ellsworth avenues
Two years ago, prosecutors said witnesses had stepped forward and pegged McInnis as the killer.Read more
Unfurling their blame-shifting strategy, attorneys for two city men accused of killing another man during a Route 29 drive-by shooting four years ago asked a retired Trenton Police detective about boundless possibilities, suggesting cops overlooked other more likely suspects.
In his classic cynical style, patented and perfected over his more than two decades in law enforcement, a nonplussed Gary Britton conceded little when he testified Thursday, sometimes belittling attorneys with remarks as condescending as the questions they asked.
For example, he quipped he couldn’t answer an inquiry from the attorney for suspected killer Andre Romero because he wasn’t a smoker.
The retired Trenton Police detective, who spent 24 years on the force and loosely dubbed parts of his job as “victimology,” wasn’t buying the smoke-and-mirrors tactics employed by attorneys for Romero and William “Bill Bill” Mitchell, who is being tried alongside his co-defendant, as they looked to pin the crime on someone else.Read more
Admitted killer Curtis Grier told a judge Wednesday he will not take back his guilty plea in the slaying of a city man after a “misunderstanding” between the judge and his defense attorney held up sentencing earlier this month.
Free on $300,000 bail, Grier pleaded guilty this year to a lesser count of reckless manslaughter, for fatally shooting 24-year-old Jahmir Hall, under a plea deal that exposed him to a maximum of 10 years in prison.
Curtis Grier
Hall was gunned down in Trenton in April 2014.
Grier’s codefendant, Daniel McCargo, pleaded guilty to a gun charge and was sentenced last month to seven years in prison.
Charged with murder as an accomplice, McCargo admitted being armed with a handgun the night Hall was shot to death, but ballistics revealed it wasn’t the handgun used in the shooting death.
Grier had been charged with murder in Hall’s slaying but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge and was supposed to be sentenced earlier this month. But it was pushed back because of apparent confusion about the terms of Grier’s plea deal. Read more
A judge who was “flying blind” in a conspiracy-murder trial crashed the plane, a defense attorney said.
And a Trenton man’s right to a fair trial perished when a jury, confused about how to reconcile competing legal issues, “compromised” by reaching “inconsistent” verdicts in August, according to court papers.
Raheem Currie
On the one hand, the jury convicted Raheem Currie of aggravated manslaughter and a gun conspiracy while acquitting him of murder and a gun conspiracy in the shooting death of James Austin, a father to twin daughters and the son of a retired city cop.
“This is legally impossible,” Furlong & Krasny associate Andrew Ferencevych wrote in court papers. “The jury concluded [Robert] Bartley and Currie did not conspire together to use the weapon for an unlawful purpose. If, according to the jury, Bartley and Currie did not share a purpose to use the weapon unlawfully against a person or property, how could Currie be guilty of aggravated manslaughter?”Read more
A disabled Trenton man who took special education classes throughout high school and whose IQ is far below average is viewed by prosecutors as a “lying murderer,” his defense attorney said.
And now a real gangster who may be a “professional cooperator,” having ratted on other Trenton men for murder and attempted murder, has pointed the finger at Robert Smith for the drive-by killing of Sidique Richardson-Howlen.
The state-approved snitch and apparent member of the 793 Bloods, Hector Maldonado, has his own problems. He was one of several members indicted in a massive racketeering case leveled against the violent street gang.Read more
Prosecutors must be throwing a fall blowout sale after a Trenton man essentially paid for one crime and got another free in murder and attempted murder cases.
Dashawn Bethea admitted Thursday to aggravated manslaughter and aggravated assault in two violent cases in Trenton and will spend less than two decades behind bars under terms of his deal with prosecutors.
He fired a .40 caliber handgun into a crowd on the 400 block of Stuyvesant Avenue on June 9, 2013 while walking with his father, Charles Boston, back from a nearby store.Read more
Former Deputy Attorney General Ellen Balint testified Wednesday in the murder trial of two city men that while she was walking from the Hughes Justice Complex toward her car after getting out of work on the evening of Jan. 30, 2012 she was startled by the cackle of gunfire and screeching tires.
Murder victim Daquan Dowling
She didn’t know it at the time, but 23-year-old Daquan Dowling had just been shot in the head as he and a friend motored northbound in the slow lane of Route 29, in a callous drive-by execution that shut down the busy highway for hours, prosecutors said.
Dowling slumped over the car console, his bloodied head landing in the lap of his shell-shocked passenger.
Prosecutors showed photos of the blood-soaked interior of Dowling’s Ford Taurus. And a supervising sergeant from the Trenton Police department held up for jurors to inspect the apparent blood-spattered shirt and sweater of Dowling’s friend, who was riding shotgun when the horror unfolded.Read more
A key witness who was allegedly held hostage by a group of men charged with killing a Liberian immigrant in 2011 has “gone off the grid” after he received phone calls and threatening letters from two suspects in Trenton’s infamous “trunk case,” prosecutors said.
Now Mercer County prosecutors must decide in the next four months whether to charge suspected triggerman Danuweli Keller and co-defendant Mack Edwards with witness tampering in one of Mercer County’s oldest murder cases.
Prosecutors were scheduled to deliver opening statements this week in the suspected killers’ murder trial but it has been pushed back to February because of the witness tampering allegations.
The two accused killers are being tried along with Phobus Sullivan for the execution-style slaying of Dardar Paye, a Liberian immigrant and U.S. veteran who was kidnapped, robbed and shot inside the basement of a Monmouth Street home on Jan. 16, 2011 in Trenton.Read more
A defense attorney for one of two suspects charged in the sensational Route 29 Statehouse slay in 2012 put on a “dog food” and pony show in court Tuesday.
Defense attorney Patrick O’Hara attacked prosecutors’ case against murder suspect Andre Romero in his opening statement, telling jurors that no matter how the state dresses it up, they’ll be left with “dog food.”
Murder victim Daquan Dowling
“The state has two wonderful cooks,” O’Hara said. “The meal is only as good as the ingredients, and the main ingredient is dog food. You’re gonna wonder how they were ever chefs.”
O’Hara didn’t delve into specifics about why he says his client is innocent of committing the Jan. 30, 2012 murder, which closed down Route 29 for several hours.
The adrenaline-crazed attorney stopped short of bringing a unicorn into the courtroom, to complete the dog food and pony show.Read more
