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Although they didn't officially disclose his age, sources with knowledge of the incident said the accused shooter is only 15.
He apparently had been sent from New York to stay with family in New Jersey, they said.
The boy “brandished a handgun and demanded that the victim turn over a backpack” in this past Sunday’s 7:46 p.m. holdup at Fairmount Avenue and Allen Street, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said Wednesday.
“The victim complied and the [robber] fled,” he said.
Authorities caught the boy and tied him to the May 29 shooting at the Deli Mart on Main Street.
That night, he entered the store shortly before its 9 p.m. closing time intending to commit a robbery, sources with direct knowledge of the incident told Daily Voice.
He apparently became irritated at some customers who were having trouble deciding what to buy, so he shot one of them, they said.
City police responding to a 911 call found the 33-year-old victim on the ground outside, Musella said Wednesday. He’d been shot in the abdomen, the prosecutor said.
The shooter “also fired shots toward two other males, nearly striking them, before fleeing the area,” he said.
Firefighters from Engine Company 5 just across the street tended to the victim before an ambulance took him to Hackensack University Medical Center for treatment. He was released several days later, Musella said.
Local authorities said after the liquor store incident that they believed the shooter was no longer in the area. Then he struck exactly a week later less than a dozen blocks away.
Delinquency complaints were signed against the boy charging him with attempted murder, robbery, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of a weapon and possession of hollow-nose ammo following an investigation by the prosecutor’s Major Crimes Unit and Hackensack police.
He remained held in the Bergen County Juvenile Detention Center in Teterboro pending a closed-door hearing in the Family Part of Superior Court in Hackensack.
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