Omar Kennedy (Mugshots.com)
A third man has been arrested for his alleged role in the death of a city teen who was shot and stomped in Trenton last month.
Omar Kennedy, 34, is charged with murder and related weapons offenses in connection with the shooting death of 19-year-old Lance Beckett. Kennedy was arrested Wednesday morning at a home in Richmond, Virginia.
Officials say the U.S. Marshals NY/NJ Regional Fugitive Task Force developed leads on Kennedy’s whereabouts and sent that information to its counterpart in Virginia. Kennedy is being held at the Richmond Justice Center pending extradition to New Jersey. His bail was set at $1 million. 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
Talk about a downward departure.
The plea deal went from 25 years with cooperation for a man charged with murder to a dozen years – without any explanation from prosecutors.
Grady A. Blue III
Grady Blue III, 23, jumped at the plea deal Friday in Mercer County criminal court.
In doing so, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of aggravated manslaughter for fatally shooting Naquan Ellis, 23, as he was stood with a group of people outside of the North 25 housing complex in June 2014.
A woman was also hit by gunfire but did not sustain serious injuries.
Blue, who also pleaded to an unrelated gun charge, admitted shooting “recklessly” into the crowd, but didn’t say why or who he was targeting.
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
A city man is accused of luring another man to his death in a Trenton alley in a heinous city murder potential involving two others, prosecutors said.
Quashawn Emanuel
Quashawn Emanuel, 18, admitted to authorities he knew he was helping set up 19-year-old Lance Beckett to be fatally shot on Sept. 18, Assistant Prosecutor Tim Ward said at a bail hearing Tuesday.
Beckett was also apparently stomped out after being shot in an alley on East Stuyvesant Avenue in Trenton’s West Ward.
A 17-year-old boy, also from Trenton, has also been charged in connection with Beckett’s murder.
His role in the brutal slaying remains unclear as his charges are being heard, at the moment, in juvenile court.
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