A heartbreaking tragedy in New Jersey has a new layer.
Seventeen-year-old Justice Deas was shot and killed in her home in Edison on Saturday (Jan. 10), and according to prosecutors, the gunman was a teenaged boy she was dating.
A 911 call was made around 1:19 a.m. after shots were fired inside a townhome on Grove Avenue. First responders discovered the 17-year-old girl dead.
A 17-year-old boy, who was not publicly identified, was reportedly at the home and was immediately taken into custody. He’s being charged with acts of juvenile delinquency, which would have been determined as weapons and manslaughter charges if he were an adult. The prosecutors have yet to release his name until a decision is made on whether he will be tried as an adult. Sources told ABC7 News in New York that cameras inside of the townhome could have recorded the shooting.
According to investigators, the two individuals were in a romantic relationship.
A memorial of candles and balloons were placed at the apartment complex following a vigil in Edison in her memory.
Friends remembered Deas as a protector and the life of the party.
“Ever since then, we’ve just been locked in forever,” Leila Martinez, who’d known Deas since middle school, said while fighting back tears. “I used to get picked on in school and Justice, whenever I needed her, she was there for me; whenever I needed her, when I had no one, I always had her.”
Deas’s shooting is the latest tragedy to occur in Edison. On Dec. 21, Imani Dia Smith, who starred in the Broadway adaptation of “The Lion King,” died at the age of 26 after being stabbed. Her boyfriend, 35-year-old Jordan D. Jackson-Small, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, third-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and fourth-degree unlawful possession of a weapon.
