Detectives spent the weekend collecting evidence, including surveillance footage from two city bars, they hope will help them piece together what happened moments before a 39-year-old city man was gunned down outside a bar wracked by a recent spate of gun violence.
Witnesses described hearing panicked screams of patrons fleeing from La Guira Bar when a hail of gunfire broke out in the bar parking lot shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday morning. Some people rushed to help the victim, Patrick Walker, who was slumped on the sidewalk suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Others ran for cover, witnesses said. Police aren’t saying whether anyone got a good glimpse of the suspect, who remains unidentified and at large.
A neighbor said she was awoken by as many as 10 gunshots. The woman, who declined to give her name but owns Ann’s Place, a bar across the street from La Guira, said she peeked out her window around 3 a.m. and saw a man, presumably a witness to the shooting, leaving the scene in a police patrol car. Read more
A city man was shot and killed Saturday morning outside of La Guira Bar.
Police say they were notified about a shooting in progress at the corner of Poplar Street and North Clinton Avenue around 2 a.m. Saturday. When officers arrived on-scene, they found a man suffering from gunshot wounds. The victim, who was later identified as 39-year-old Patrick V. Walker, was then taken to Capital Health Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Patrick Walker
There are two bars located at the intersection of Poplar and North Clinton: La Guira Bar and Ann’s Place. That location sometimes draws large crowds of people, especially when the bars are closing on early Saturday and Sunday mornings. The area was extremely quiet around 7 a.m. Saturday while police guarded the crime scene. As people drove by on their way to handle morning business, many of them stopped to ask how many victims had died. The expression on their faces showed that they were all too familiar with violence in the city, and some of them shook their head in disgust as they drove away. Read more
Prosecutors say this surveillance photo shows Shaheed Brown (left) and Enrico Smalley Jr. minutes before Smalley was gunned down outside of La Guira Bar on July 12, 2014.
The attorney representing Shaheed Brown, who is accused of killing 20-year-old Enrico Smalley Jr., says that Mercer County prosecutors are withholding evidence that could exonerate his client.
“They turned over the discovery, but they didn’t turn over any of the videotapes,” Brown’s defense attorney Edward Heyburn said. “I have a good faith belief that the videotape is going to show the shooter, and it’s going to show that it was somebody other than my client.”
Mercer County Assistant Prosecutor Brian McCauley said he has no evidence suggesting that someone other than Brown pulled the trigger. He also said he plans to turn over the surveillance tapes before the next court date which is scheduled for January.
“Discovery is an ongoing process,” McCauley said. “We’ve turned over everything we have so far.”
But the argument between the two attorneys does not end there. Heyburn says he’s spoken with witnesses who claim that law enforcement showed them pictures of a suspect in Smalley’s murder who is not Brown. But McCauley says that if Heyburn has spoken to those witnesses, he is the one withholding information. Read more
The man accused in the stabbing death of a 21-year-old man outside of a city bar is claiming he acted in self-defense, his attorney said at a bail hearing Friday.
Ernier Pacheco, 18, of Trenton, is accused of stabbing Alberto Saquic once in the chest outside Chapala II bar on Morris Avenue.
Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Korngut said prosecutors have not determined a motive for the killing, which took place in the early-morning hours of Nov. 30.
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Teenager Alberto Lopez stared at a county prosecutor befuddled by the accusation that he staged a fake drug deal on the night of Dec. 18, 2013 in order to rob another teenager.
Prosecutors said Lopez, who was 16 at the time, ended up shooting 17-year-old Shamere Melvin in the head during the botched robbery shortly after 8:30 p.m. on the 300 block of North Clinton Avenue. Melvin died at the scene. Lopez, 17, is being tried as an adult on charges of murder, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a weapon.
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A Trenton man has admitted driving the getaway car in a botched robbery that led to the murder of a 48-year-old man, prosecutors said, but he is not the one who pulled trigger.
Kenneth Hines (Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office)
Kenneth Hines, 34, is charged with murder as an accomplice and conspiracy in the shooting death of Rodney Burke and is locked up at Mercer County Correction Center. But police are still searching for two men, including the gunman, who were involved in a Nov. 4 plot to rob Burke when he emerged from his 1016 South Broad Street apartment, prosecutors said at Hines’ bail hearing Wednesday. Read more
A Trenton man is expected to take his case to trial rather than accept an offer from prosecutors that would require him to spend 30 years in prison for murder.
Dashawn Bethea, 25, is accused of firing a .40 caliber handgun into a crowd on the 400 block of Stuyvesant Avenue on June 9, 2013 while he was walking with his father, Charles Boston, back from a nearby store. Read more
The Trenton man implicated in a Halloween homicide of a Philadelphia man was out on bail on weapons charges at the time of the shooting, prosecutors said.
Donte Jones
Donte Jones, 23, allegedly opened fire and killed 36-year-old Levonza Thompson with a 9mm handgun in the courtyard of the Oakland Park Apartments at 220 Coolidge Avenue, prosecutors said. Police found Thompson suffering from multiple gun shots wounds after he and Jones were involved in a struggle. He was rushed to a hospital where he died a short time later. Read more
City homicide detectives grilled Zaire Jackson in a small interrogation room inside the Trenton police department for more than two hours in April 2012. But they never got him to bend to their will.
They were hoping Zaire, in custody on an unrelated burglary charge, would supply them with a much-needed confession so they could string him up for the murder of Irvin “Swirv” Jackson.
Jackson, who is not related to Zaire Jacskon, was shot in the head in broad daylight on Moses Alley near North Hermitage Avenue on the afternoon April 9, 2012. Read more
A senseless dispute between gang members ended one man’s life and will put another one in prison for several decades.
Douglas Battle, 23, will spend 20 years in prison after he was sentenced for the June 2012 shooting death of Wilfredo Rivera, a fellow member of the Sex Money sect of the notorious Bloods street gang. He must serve 17 years before he is eligible for parole. Read more
