The shooting occurred near the telephone pole at center above, according to a neighbor. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A man and a woman shot on Red Bank’s West Side Thursday night were in critical condition early Friday morning, police Chief Darren McConnell tells redbankgreen.
Authorities are not yet releasing the identities of the victims, who were found shot inside a parked vehicle on West Sunset Avenue between Shrewsbury and Leighton Avenues at around 8:30 p.m., McConnell said.
The man, who was shot as he said behind the steering wheel, was taken to Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune, which has a regional trauma center. The woman, who was beside him in the passenger seat, was first taken to Riverview Medical Center, but later transported to Jersey Shore, McConnell said.
Both were in critical condition as of 1:30 a.m., he said.
McConnell said he was familiar with both victims as people “with ties to Red Bank,” but was unsure of their current addresses.
He said authorities didn’t have much information about the crime, as there were likely to be few if any witnesses, given the time of the shooting.
Crime-scene tape and latex medical gloves littered the street in the vicinity of 24 West Sunset as a television news crew prepared to broadcast Friday morning.
A neighbor, Hugo Guerra, said he saw medical personnel removing the male victim from a truck parked near a telephone pole on the opposite side of the street from his home.
Guerra said he had been watching television with his children at about 8:30 when he heard a shot.
“I told my kids, ‘stay down, that’s a shot,'” he told redbankgreen. He said he heard a second shot 30 to 60 seconds later.
The crime was reminiscent of one last April, in which 28-year-old Perry Veney was shot as he sat in a car idling on South Pearl Willow Street. Ex-con Anthony Sims has been indicted in that case.
