Camden teen slain; cousin is charged

Pleasant Street was riddled with pain and bullet holes yesterday as a Camden family mourned the shooting death of a 16-year-old boy, grappled with the arrest of his 24-year-old cousin in the crime, and blamed city police for shooting a 68-year-old relative in the ensuing chaos.

"We're all family. We all grew up together," Yamilca Caban, a cousin of the murder suspect, said as she wiped tears beneath her sunglasses.

The suspect, Jose Feliciano, told investigators that "he was under a lot of pressure" when he shot Ramon Roman inside his home at 3160 Pleasant St. Tuesday afternoon, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office said.

When Camden police responded to a 9-1-1 call from the relatively peaceful Baldwin's Run development about 4:30 p.m., they found Feliciano outside his home. Roman was lying on the ground near him after having run out of the house. Police exchanged gunfire with Feliciano, who then fled back inside.

Juan Lopez, who was identified by a relative as the suspect's uncle and the victim's grandfather, was inside his house next door when he was shot and wounded in the exchange, the prosecutor's office said.

Lopez was in stable condition at Cooper University Hospital yesterday, the prosecutor's office said.

Feliciano, unharmed, surrendered to police soon after the shoot-out.

Sullen and quiet with long, black hair, Feliciano nearly buckled to his knees yesterday in Camden County Superior Court, where he was ordered held on $750,000 cash bail on murder charges. He has not been charged with shooting his uncle.

Feliciano's sister believes that Camden police mistakenly opened fire on Lopez's home.

"They were shooting at his house because they thought Jose was in there," said a tearful Crystal Mendez, 22.

Investigators examined several bullet holes in the side of Lopez's home yesterday.

Jason Laughlin, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, said his office was investigating Lopez's shooting and the family's claims.

Mendez said her brother would never have shot Roman, his cousin and lifelong friend, on purpose. Caban added that Feliciano may have been under the influence of "wet," which is marijuana or tobacco dipped in embalming fluid and often laced with PCP.

Feliciano, a truck driver, and Roman, a student at Woodrow Wilson High School, were like "two peas in a pod," Mendez added.

"There was no argument. They were playing with the gun and telling my grandmother it was a BB gun. He would never do something like that," she said.

According to the state Department of Corrections, Feliciano served 14 months in prison for burglary and for pointing a firearm, but Mendez said her brother's prior run-ins with the law were "nothing major."

"He has the mind of a little kid," she said.

Police tape and memorial candles are rarely seen in Baldwin's Run, a community of 516 suburban-style homes in East Camden hailed by Cottage Living magazine as one of the top 10 cottage neighborhoods in the country in 2008 because of its "miracle turnaround."

On Tuesday, "In Loving Memory of Ray" was spray-painted in black across one of the development's streets.