Daily Mail
August 6, 2014
Four suspects have been arrested in the shooting deaths of two New Jersey teens – one a straight-A prep school student and the other a recent high school graduate.
Ali Muhammad Brown, 29; Jeremy Villagran, 19; Andre Fields, 31; and Eric Williams, 18, were arrested and charged separately in the deaths of Brendan Tevlin, 19, and 17-year-old Cheyanne Bond.
The two victims were killed in separate attacks in and around Newark, the largest and most-dangerous city in the Garden State.
Tevlin was reportedly shot dead June 25 in his SUV after being robbed of several items. He graduated from a local prep school with straight-A’s and was attending Richmond University. His sophomore year was due to start later this month, according to NJ.com.
Williams reportedly stayed behind the wheel of a getaway car while Villagran and Brown had a conversation with Tevlin before firing eight bullets into him, authorities said.
‘He was, at this time, a simple victim of an intent to rob,’ Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn A. Murray said at a Monday press conference.
Brown is also wanted in the double murder of two gay men in Seattle, according to police. The registered sex offender was arrested July 18, and a gun found in the makeshift tent where he lived was linked to all three murders, said Murray.
The suspected triple-murder is being held on $5million bail at Essex County Jail.
Bond was gunned down June 29 by Fields after two other men demanded her iPhone, according to the site. She graduated from Malcolm X Shabazz High School in Newark only days before her death.
She was shot in the head, a friend of hers was also shot but survived, according to police. A second suspect is still at large, but Fields was linked to the murder.
She planned to study nursing at Union County Community College, family told NJ.com. Her classes would have started next month.
The arrests came just over one month after about 1,000 people attended Tevlin’s funeral.
A full Irish pipe and drum band sounded as a black hearse carrying the teen’s body arrived for the service in a long funeral procession, flanked by around a dozen police outriders.
Once inside Reverend Brian Needles paid tribute to the, ‘Amazing, gifted and respectful’ 19-year-old and spoke of his family’s, ‘unbearable pain and unrelenting grief’. He added that no one could understand why the model student’s life had been cut so tragically short.
He went on to say, ‘It’s not supposed to be like this, a mother and father are not supposed to bury a child.
‘Brendan, an amazing gifted young man… with so much potential, so much to look forward to, so much to offer this world, never getting a chance, it’s just not supposed to be like this.’
At the end of the hour-and-a-half long Catholic service, held at The Church of Saint Philomena in Livingston, Brendan’s two brothers Brian and Sean and sister Michaela paid tearful tributes to, ‘the best brother in the world’.
They also thanked the local community for the outpouring of grief and the countless offers of support the family has received since Brendan’s brutal slaying in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Between tears, Brendan’s sister Michaela told the congregation how he touched the lives of, ‘Every person he ever encountered’ and lived every day to the fullest. She also described him as someone who truly made a difference.