Two people died and five others were injured by gun violence in New Jersey during the last few days.
Police in Newark are trying to determine the location of a shooting that sent a man suffering from a gunshot injury to the emergency room at University Hospital on Sunday, May 1 at around midnight.
The victim’s injuries were reported as non-life-threatening.
The motive for the attack is under investigation and no other injuries were reported but there were several reports of shots fired around the city and authorities have not determined at which location the victim was injured.
One 25-year-old Trenton resident died and two others were injured Sunday afternoon in a Trenton shooting.
Shooters fired multiple rounds of bullets in the vicinity of 158 Randall Avenue just before 1:27 p.m., sending police to the scene to investigate.
Officers found Jamir McNeil who was shot and killed, becoming the capital city’s 10th homicide victim of the year, while two other individuals who were injured were treated at Fuld Medical Center.
A 21-year-old woman, who was heading to the Edison Police station to report her boyfriend for attacking and attempting to strangle her, was shot in the back of the head by the man.
Police are looking for Christopher Finney, 25, of Piscataway, the boyfriend who fled after shooting the woman at around 5:45 p.m. Tuesday May 3, near Route 27 and Colton Road.
The victim was “alert and conscious” when she was brought to a local hospital and her injuries are not considered life-threatening.
Also on Tuesday, a man was injured when he was shot in the face at South 17th Street and 18th Avenue in Newark. Suspects fled in a stolen car.
A 25-year-old Paterson man Nasir Davis, died Tuesday night after he was found wounded by gunfire inside a vehicle parked in the city at about 9:15 p.m.
Paterson Chief of Police Ibrahim Baycora said officers responding to the area of Auburn and Fair streets on a report of a shooting.
Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia M. Valdes said Davis was taken to St. Joseph’s University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 9:45 p.m.
Mother Jones national affairs editor Mark Follman has been researching mass shootings since 2012, when a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.
Follman says there are numerous misconceptions about mass shootings, including the notion that such massacres come out of nowhere, and that no one saw them coming.
“This is planned violence,” says Follman. “There is, in every one of these cases, always a trail of behavioral warning signs.”
“And we have an enormous amount of guns,” says Follman.
Trenton, Jersey City, Newark, Paterson, and Camden had 10% of the state population but account for 62% of New Jersey’s 1,412 shooting victims in 2021.
“Black and brown communities have experienced a significant divestment of community resources, and that has compounded over the decades,” said Brooke Lewis, a lawyer at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. “If you don’t have access to quality education, if you don’t have access to quality housing, if you don’t have access to quality health care, all of that impacts public safety.”