The Black Community's silence

Subject: The Black Community's silence

Weekend shootings take four lives in Newark
Posted by Suleman Din and Claire Heininger August 06, 2007 5:13AM
Categories: Crime/Courts, Essex County, News
Three college students were killed execution-style at a school playground in Newark on a bloody night of shootings that left four dead, several others wounded and civic leaders frustrated by the relentless violence.

The series of attacks began just before midnight Saturday, when four friends became targets of a robbery as they ate, drank and listened to music in a parking lot behind Mount Vernon School, authorities said.

More coverage:
--In one brutal Newark night, three good kids are gone

-- Map of violence

-- Photos from the scene

-- WCBS.com video: Booker comments

-- WCBS.com video: Police Hunt For Shooters In Newark Executions


The Newark natives were slowly joined by a group of men who drifted in a few at a time. Sensing danger, the students took out their cell phones.

"There were text messages back and forth between the victims: 'Let's get out of here,'" Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy said yesterday. But it was already too late.

"That's when the robbery went down," he said.

The attackers, described as at least five young men, first shot a young woman, police said. They then marched the other three victims down an alley, lined them up against a wall and forced them to kneel, police said. Then they shot each one in the head.

Terrance Aeriel, 18, Dashon Harvey, 20, and Iofemi Hightower, 20, were killed, police said. Aeriel's sister, 19-year-old Natasha Aeriel, the first to be shot, was hit close to her ear. She survived when the bullet passed through the front of her face, relatives said.

Natasha Aeriel was recovering in fair condition at University Hospital in Newark yesterday, after being upgraded from critical condition, a hospital spokesman said.

Authorities said she was cooperating as their lead witness.

"I'm in shock. It doesn't seem real," said Renee Tucker, the mother of the Aeriel siblings. "This needs to stop."

The victims did not know their assailants, Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow said at a news conference last night, where authorities offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the attackers' arrest. Police had not identified any suspects, McCarthy said.

It was unclear whether the assailants were successful in stealing anything, police said.

"We are absolutely devastated and frustrated," Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura said, stressing that police regularly patrol in the area of the attack. "It's not a lack of resources. It's young people out there armed to the gills with no respect for human life."

A separate shooting at 8:30 a.m. Sunday on Smith Street left Montclair resident Quintez Waller dead, authorities said. They called that slaying retaliation for a 3 a.m. shooting that injured at least one person in the same area. And at midnight Saturday, two people were shot and injured on First Street, police said.

The four killings brought the number of homicides in the city this year to 60, compared with 63 for the same time last year, police said. But while authorities emphasized their efforts to crack down on street violence, incensed neighborhood activists were quick to blame Newark Mayor Cory Booker for falling short on a campaign pledge.

"They are not keeping us safe. It's appalling that (Booker) will allow bodies to keep falling on the streets of Newark," said Donna Jackson, president of Take Back Our Streets and a frequent critic of the Booker administration. She added her group will stand on the steps of City Hall at noon today to pressure Booker to resign.

The mayor initially declined to comment on the slayings, saying through a spokeswoman that it would be "irresponsible" for him to talk about "an ongoing police investigation." But he later arrived at the evening news conference with a police escort, lights flashing and sirens blaring. He said the killings had kept him up all night.

"It's obvious that I'm not to blame for this, but I'm taking personal responsibility. This is just not acceptable," Booker said. "This breaks the heart of our city."

The schoolyard victims, Booker said, were "our success stories" -- four young friends who had all blazed paths leading out of Newark, their families said.

Harvey and Natasha Aeriel, both entering their junior years at Delaware State University, were majoring in psychology and excelling in school. Terrance Aeriel and Hightower were about to enter their first year at the Dover, Del., school. She worked at an assisted-living facility, with an eye toward business, and he was an ordained minister and mentor in his community.

"He was really something special," said James Harvey, Dashon's father. "He was what a young man is supposed to be."

Waller, the Smith Street victim, was a onetime star football player at Montclair High School who went on to military school, said Katherine Fayers, a friend of Waller's family who lives in their former apartment in Montclair. The spiritual child of a preacher, Waller was his mother's only son, Fayers said.

"His mother never saw him eat before blessing the food," Fayers said. "She's going to die. It's going to kill her."

As relatives and friends grappled with their losses yesterday, residents of the shooting-scarred neighborhoods were left with fears of their own.

"We have shootings in daylight on a Sunday morning, that's a problem, that's scary," said Jackson, the community activist who lives near the Smith Street shooting sites.

The schoolyard killings come three years after a brutal quadruple-slaying beside a South Ward church, apparently meant to silence a witness in a gang-related homicide.

Rasherra Freeman, 26, whose mother lives near Harvey's family, lost her 22-year-old cousin Tywan Freeman to a Newark shooting last June. His death came during another bloody summer weekend -- eight shootings that injured 11 and killed two.

Shortly after his death, Rasherra Freeman said she moved from Newark to Pennsylvania, where she said she feels safer.

"These guns are hard," she said. "It's terrible out here."

Staff writers Alexi Friedman, Carly Rothman, John Holl, Jonathan Schuppe, Melissa Castro and Julie O'Connor contributed to this report.


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4 young lives which were heading in promising directions were destroyed by animals of which the deepest levels of hell are not fitting. And yet, every time an NYPD officer even writes a speeding ticket, people are up and in arms

Disgusting....