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Munir “Mu” Muhammad was carrying the converted 9mm handgun when he was arrested on Wednesday, April 12, U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger said.
The gun had fired 28 rounds in the April 8 shooting at the Oscar Miles Housing Complex and was fitted with an extended magazine loaded with another 30, Sellinger said Thursday.
Three opponents were wounded, one critically, in what the U.S. attorney said is part of a bloody ongoing gun battle between rivals on a street known as the “Cake Block” off Clinton Place and Weequahic Avenue.
Muhammad runs with a group that operates in the area of Vorhees Street and the Bradley Court Housing Complex, Sellinger said.
Together, they’ve committed “numerous shootings that targeted individuals who operate in the area of the Oscar Miles Housing Complex and Goodwin Avenue,” he said.
Muhammad was brought before U.S. Magistrate Judge José R. Almonte in Newark on Thursday and ordered held pending trial. He’s charged federally with possession of a machine gun and possession of an unregistered firearm.
Sellinger credited the Newark Department of Public Safety, special agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Newark Field Division and special agents of the Secret Service’s New York Field Office in making the case.
The crime fighters are part of a “supergroup,” of sorts – known as the Violent Crime Initiative (VCI) – that targets thriving criminal organizations in Newark, Paterson and elsewhere in New Jersey.
Sellinger defined the VCI as a “collaborative, multi-agency program designed to combine the resources of New Jersey’s federal, state, and local law enforcement to identify, target, and prosecute violent offenders and criminal organizations” throughout the state.
The Newark version involves his office, the county prosecutor’s office and Brick City police, as well as various other local, county, state and federal agencies.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Desiree Grace, who’s the deputy chief of Sellinger’s Criminal Division in Newark, is handling the Muhammad case.
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