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Officers responding to a call on Johnson Avenue found the adult victim dead and the boy gravely wounded shortly after 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 3, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said on Thursday.
The child was transported to University Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased at 9:14 p.m., Platkin said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.
A second man was taken to Beth Israel Medical Center with a gunshot wound that wasn't life-threatening, according to Essex County Prosecutor Theodore N. Stephens II. Platkin didn't mention that, however.
The shooter was still armed when two city officers chased him on foot and shot him moments after the call, the attorney general said. Witnesses said he was carrying a semiautomatic handgun.
His identity, as well as those of the victims, were temporarily being withheld, Platkin said.
Both state law and his own guidelines require the attorney general to review deaths that occur “during an encounter with a law enforcement officer acting in the officer’s official capacity or while the decedent is in custody," no matter what the circumstances are, the attorney general has said.
The guidelines guarantee that the investigation is done “in a full, impartial and transparent manner," removing politics or personal agendas, he said.
Once the investigation by Platkin’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) is completed, the results are presented to the grand jury “in a neutral, objective manner, and with appropriate transparency,” the attorney general said.
The panel then renders a ruling on whether it was a clean shoot or a criminal investigation is warranted.
“An officer may use deadly force in New Jersey when the officer reasonably believes it is immediately necessary to protect the officer or another person from imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm,” Platkin has noted.
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