Four charged in 'terrorizing' Camden crime spree to appear in court
A 16-year-old and three young men who took turns robbing four randomly chosen people in Camden and shot at each of them in May, killing one, will make separate appearances in court next month, prosecutors said Friday.
A 16-year-old and three young men who took turns robbing four randomly chosen people in Camden and shot at each of them in May, killing one, will make separate appearances in court next month, prosecutors said Friday.
Christian Ortiz, 16, of Merchantville, who is being tried as an adult, was initially expected to appear Friday in Superior Court with three others: Aaron Swann and Ashan Thomas, both of Pennsauken, and Raquan Handon of Camden.
The four, however, cannot be in a holding cell outside the courtroom at the same time because they are not supposed to talk to each other, Assistant Prosecutor Peter Gallagher said.
Swann and Handon are now expected to appear Friday, and Ortiz and Thomas on Nov. 7, Gallagher said. The four will be brought in individually during separate hearings, he said.
Authorities said the four defendants - who face murder charges and were ages 16 to 19 at the time of the crimes - found their victims while driving around in an SUV, which was Swann's mother's vehicle. The shootings occurred between 11:20 p.m. May 17 and 1:30 a.m. the following day.
"They drove around the city of Camden for two hours terrorizing people," Camden County Assistant Prosecutor Christine Shah said in court in May, when a judge ordered that Swann, Thomas, and Handon each be held on $2 million bail.
Terron L. Phillips, 19, was killed while walking home from an East Camden gas station, where he had just bought a pack of cigarettes, when Ortiz shot him in the chest, authorities said. Handon also stole Phillips' cigarettes, police said.
Phillips was taken to Cooper University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
In the earlier incidents that night, Swann tapped a woman's car window with the barrel of a shotgun and then shot through the windshield as she tried to drive away, prosecutors said. The woman and another person in the vehicle, in the 1400 block of South Eighth Street, were not struck.
Less than an hour later, near Garden and Fremont Avenues, Thomas got out of the SUV with the shotgun and told a man walking outside, "What you got? Give me what you got," before pumping the shotgun and firing at the man, prosecutors said. The man ran away uninjured.
The shooting of Phillips occurred afterward, around 1:30 a.m., not far from the United gas station in the 3100 block of River Avenue.
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