Two dead in North Jersey shootings
PERTH AMBOY, N.J. - A Perth Amboy man fired a semiautomatic handgun at an occupied vehicle and people standing nearby, killing a woman and wounding others, before he died early yesterday, authorities said.
PERTH AMBOY, N.J. - A Perth Amboy man fired a semiautomatic handgun at an occupied vehicle and people standing nearby, killing a woman and wounding others, before he died early yesterday, authorities said.
Perth Amboy Officer Ganagioti Bouleris, who arrived with another officer as 27-year-old Edwin Cordero Jr. was shooting at the vehicle, told Cordero to drop his gun, according to the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office.
When Cordero didn't comply, Bouleris fired five shots about the same time Cordero shot himself in the neck, the Prosecutor's Office said in a news release.
The office would not immediately disclose whether Bouleris' shots had hit anyone, or exactly how Cordero had died in the shooting, which took place shortly after 2 a.m. in a working-class neighborhood.
Also dead was Fabia Aguilar, 26, of Plainfield. Described by authorities as an acquaintance of Cordero's, Aguilar had 12 wounds from Cordero's handgun.
Three other people, whose names were not released, were shot and taken to hospitals. Two remained hospitalized after surgery, and a third was treated for a leg wound and released.
Of the three wounded, two were hit by rounds from Cordero's gun, according to the Prosecutor's Office. Police were investigating whose gunshots had hit the third wounded person.
Later in the morning, blood and bullet casings were still on the street and sidewalk.
Vincent Uveges, 46, said shots and screams outside his house had awakened him and his family.
"I saw three guys on the ground. Two of them were wounded, and one was obviously dead. It was a lot of shots going off very quickly. The guy who was lying dead on the sidewalk had a gun," Uveges said.
Laura Ruiz, 23, said her husband, John Ruiz, 24, was the first person shot. Laura Ruiz declined to discuss how the shooting had happened, but said her husband had been taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, where he was treated for a leg wound and released.
" 'Wrong place, wrong time,' is what he keeps telling me," Laura Ruiz said.
The Perth Amboy officers came across the shooting shortly after handling a disturbance at a nearby bar, but the Prosecutor's Office said there was no indication the bar fight and the shooting were related.