Montgomery Terrace on Tilton Avenue, scene of Monday night’s shooting.
Two men are in critical but stable condition at an unidentified hospital this evening after being shot outside the Montgomery Terrace apartments late last night, according to the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s office.
Authorities are seeking 19-year-old Anthony Sims, who gives addresses in both Red Bank and Eatontown, as the suspect in the shootings. He has been charged in absentia with three counts of attempted murder and related weapons charges.
“Sims remains at large and is considered armed and dangerous,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Luis A. Valentin said in a press release issued late this afternoon. “Anyone with information regarding Sims’ whereabouts is urged to contact police immediately so that he can be swiftly and safely taken into custody.”
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A third intended victim was shot at but not struck, the prosecutor’s office reported.
Authorities are withholding the names of the victims and the name of the hospital they’re in to ensure their safety, we’re told. “With an armed shooter at large, this is an unusual situation,” a member of the prosecutor’s staff told us this evening.
The Asbury Park Press is reporting that the two gunshot victims are “reportedly brothers.” Assistant Prosecutor Peter Warshaw said he would not comment on the report or immediately disclose where the victims were from.
Sims is described as a black male, approximately 5′ 10″ tall and weighing about 160 pounds, with a dark complexion, black hair and brown eyes. Anyone with information regarding Sims’ whereabouts or the shooting is asked to immediately call Detective Jeff Wilbert of the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office at 1-800-533-7443 or Detective Robert Clayton of the Red Bank Police Department at 732-530-2719.
The prosecutor’s office reported that authorities were called to the scene, on Tilton Avenue, at 11:38p after reports of shots fired. There, they found the two victims, whose identities they have not released, with apparent gunshot wounds that were life-threatening.
Both victims had emergency surgery and are in critical but stable condition, the prosecutor’s announcement says.
No motive for the shootings was given. Authorities also did not specify exactly where the victims were found, but redbankgreen has learned they were in the area of the north-facing units in the photo above.
At Montgomery Terrace early this afternoon, there was no police tape or other obvious indications that a crime had occurred. One resident and a man who said he was a visitor to the apartment complex declined to talk to a redbankgreen reporter.
A crew of workmen cleaning up after demolishing a shed at the complex said they were unaware that there had been a shooting.
“But now that we know, as soon as darkness falls, we’ll be out of here,” one of them said.
The 40-unit complex, which is owned and managed by the Red Bank Housing Authority, has been the site of gun-related crimes in the past.
In April, 2006, a 22-year-old man was shot in the leg in a drive-by shooting; police said at the time that there were no indications that it was gang-related, according to an article in the Hub.
Montgomery Terrace was also the scene of one of four reports of gunfire on the West Side in July and August of this year.
No one was injured and no property damage was reported at the apartments, though police found empty shell casings on the scene. The shooting, and the three reported at the same time, is still under investigation by police.
