The city of Newark is tonight cloaked in a grief that is both profound and, tragically, familiar. A street corner, the intersection of Chancellor Avenue and Leslie Street, has become another bloody altar in the nation’s endless vigil for its children.
The sounds of a Saturday evening were shattered by gunfire, and when the echoes faded, five lives were broken.
A 10-year-old boy and a 21-year-old woman were dead. An 11-year-old boy, a 19-year-old, and a 60-year-old man were wounded.
The young victim has been identified as Jordan Garcia, a budding athlete who wore the uniform of the West Ward Hawks with pride.
His uncle, Kevin Porter, could only express a numbness, a real pain, and a plea that has become a national refrain: “We gotta do better.”
The 21-year-old woman was Kiyah Scott. Her mother, Annette Ryan, standing before a rally against the violence that took her daughter, did not plead.
She promised a raw justice. “Whoever you are, you know who you are. You will be caught. You will be caught. It will be vengeance,” she said.
Exclusive surveillance video paints a chilling portrait of a moment turned monstrous. It shows a group of people standing outside a liquor store, a common scene on a weekend evening.
Then, two shooters appear, firing multiple times before running off into the night, leaving behind the terrible, quiet aftermath.
Residents describe a hail of gunfire so powerful it shook their homes and their souls.
Manuel Sencion, who works at a nearby supermarket, said he threw himself to the floor, traumatized.
“I couldn’t even sleep because it’s so sad,” Sencion said, “and nobody deserve like this. That was a child over there.”
The physical evidence of the violence is everywhere. The awning of Emily’s Professional African Hair Salon, just feet away, is pierced by a bullet.
The owner, Emily, described the terror of hearing the shots, dropping to the floor with her customers, and then stepping outside to see the unthinkable: children lying on the ground.
One man was seen desperately pulling a child to safety, a single, futile act of heroism against an onslaught of cowardice.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka called it a “dark and devastating day,” stating that no explanation on earth could justify what he termed a “depraved and senseless” shooting.
A $10,000 reward is now offered for information leading to an arrest.
On Sunday night, a community gathered not with reward posters, but with candles and with anger, demanding an end to the violence that has, once again, stolen their sense of peace and stolen a child’s future.
The motive remains a mystery. The suspects remain at large.
A city, even one praised for a historic reduction in violence, is left to mourn a little boy in a football jersey and a young woman at the start of her life, two more names added to the grim ledger of a national crisis that shows no sign of abating.