JERSEY CITY AND BEYOND — Two young men were shot and killed this weekend in Jersey City, possibly part of a rash of shootings of young men in the city that has gone on for more than a year. Hudson County Prosectuor Edward DeFazio told a local daily newspaper that the shootings were premeditated and that investigators are looking at the angle that they may have been related to some of last year’s murders of young men.
Last year, there were a rash of shootings that DeFazio told the Jersey City Reporter may have been related to gang revenge; read the story that appeared in last year’s Reporter HERE.
According to the most recent report in a local daily, armed gunmen entered a Wegman Parkway home at 3:15 a.m. Friday and shot Ronald Jordan, 21, as he was watching TV. Jordan lived elsewhere, however, in the Marion Gardens public housing complex.
Before the end of that day, at 11:30 p.m., Stevens Avenue resident Ezekiel Sims, 31, was shot once “execution style” in a stairwell in the same complex, even if he did not live there, according to the newspaper.
These were the first two murders of the year in Jersey City.
Meanwhile, Sunday night, in an unrelated incident, the New York Times reports that an 18-year-old senior at a local vocational school was blinded by a shot in the face in a “police-involved” shooting near Bergen and Dwight Streets on Sunday night.
The man was taken to Jersey City Medical Center around 8:30 p.m. A relative told the newspaper that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Watch this space or this weekend’s Jersey City Reporter for more about these troubling incidents.